The Journey That Mattered
by scotchplaid
Summary: Bering & Wells AU. A horse opera with six shooters, cowboys, and a saloon called the Rusty Spur.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

Sweetwater had the same hopeful, optimistic ring that the names of so many other dusty prairie towns had, Clear Lake, Blue Spring, Pleasant Valley, and just like those others the reality of its setting belied its name. As Myka surveyed the cluster of buildings in the center of the town with their weathered wood and peeling paint and then the endless grasslands, nearly gray under the afternoon sun, she saw nothing that suggested any bountiful supply of water, sweet or otherwise. Her father was paying the man he had hired to cart them and their few belongings from the train station to the _Journal_'s home, a worn building that housed both the paper's office and press and their living quarters. With one last glance at the quiet main street, Myka entered their new home, reminding herself that she needed to accept Sweetwater with an open mind just as she hoped the town would accept her and her father. This was their fresh start (yet again), and the disappointments of the past had to be left behind.

Someone had taken the time to clean the rooms. The floors were swept and the corners free of cobwebs. She inspected the printing press, which, although old, looked to be in working order. There were three rooms in the back, a parlor furnished with a few pieces of well-worn furniture, the kitchen with its undoubtedly idiosyncratic range that Myka would have to learn to master, and the bedroom. She and her father had occupied smaller, worse places, and at least there was an alcove off the kitchen where she could sleep. Turning back toward the office, she saw her father sitting at the editor's desk, sipping from his ever-present flask.

"What do you think, Myka?" Are we going to be a beacon of light for this community? Be the voice of democracy, of the rights of man?" His words weren't slurred yet, but Myka could hear the familiar echo of self-loathing. He would continue drinking through the day, she knew, lost in memories of happier times, when her mother was still alive and he was publishing articles and editorials that he was proud of, that he believed might lead to change if he dinned his message enough in his readers' ears. But if Warren Bering maintained that he hadn't grown smaller over the years, the papers had. Myka dimly remembered living in a big house where sunshine poured through the windows and she could curl up in an armchair in the library and read about knights errant and princes in disguise (she never had much use for stories about princesses). She remembered the noise and energy of a city and her father coming home, talking animatedly to her mother about his meetings with the city council and important businessmen but he never forgot, in whatever excitement followed him home, to sweep up her and her sister Tracy and kiss them soundly on their cheeks. Myka would bury her head in his neck, inhaling the scents of peppermint and tobacco. But the joy in the Bering household had disappeared long ago, and the cities had dwindled to towns, and her father's pride lay at the bottom of the bottles that only he thought he had successfully secreted in the drawers of his desk.

He was lucky to have been hired by the _Journal_; the publisher of the last paper Warren Bering edited had fired him six months into the job. Their path to Dakota Territory had been a winding one. The Berings had left an agricultural community in California where Warren had taken the city treasurer to task for some mismanaged accounts resulting in his being asked by the treasurer's brother-in-law, the mayor, to resign, to take over a paper in a mining town in Nevada. There the town fathers had been an incensed by an editorial deploring the working conditions of the mine, and Warren received his dismissal just days later. The _Journal_'s publisher, however, hadn't been put off by the idea of hiring a firebrand, noting only in the letter offering Warren the job, that he expected the paper to provide a forum for 'lively discussion.' Myka could still recall the bold strokes of the signature, the thick vertical slashes that formed the H and the sweeping W of Wells.

"What's the big news of the day?" Her father demanded sourly of the room. "The Saturday social has been moved from Saturday to Wednesday? A new litter of kittens has been delivered in the Smiths' barn?"

"Shsh, shsh." Myka gingerly patted his shoulder. Although not a violent man even in his cups, Warren Bering had a drunk's surliness, and Myka had learned from experience to touch him with caution. "I need to go out for a little while. Will you be all right here?"

"Of course," he snapped.

Her shoes clattered loudly on the walk, the wooden planks warped and cracked with age. The heat was a wall that Myka felt she was pushing against, and the wind was whipping her skirts around her legs. She almost wished she wouldn't be able to speak with Mr. Wells; he would find her a sight, with her dress plastered to her sweaty skin and her hair a wind-tossed mess of curls. Her hair was hard to manage in the best conditions, and she knew that the wind had long since sprung it from the knot she had wrested it into in the morning. But she needed to discuss with the publisher his expectations for the paper. She didn't want a repetition of what had happened in Hartsville, and though it would be more appropriate for her father to attempt this meeting, Myka could fall back on the excuses she had used for so many years with town officials and businessmen, "My father is under the weather and sent me in his place. . . . He's busy planning the next edition as we speak and asked if I would meet with you." She was so busy rehearsing what she would say to Mr. Wells that she rocked back on her heels with a gasp when a man suddenly appeared in front of her.

He shot out a hand to steady her. "Sorry, miss," he said with an engaging grin as he doffed his hat, "but I know everybody in this town, and no one this pretty has graced Sweetwater since." He stopped, searching for the comparison, but finally gave her a boyish shrug and said, "Well, in a long time."

Myka took in the star on his vest and peered into the building he had exited. At the back she could make out a series of iron bars and, behind them, a small cot. She was in front of Sweetwater's jail. She wondered how soon it would be before she would have to come to the jail to retrieve her father after sleeping off a drunk. But this man had a kind face and warm brown eyes, she didn't think he would pity her, like some of the lawmen had, or, worse, threaten her that the next time Warren would wake up and find himself on a train or coach out of town. "You must be the –"

"Pete Lattimer. The law in town when there's call for it."

Myka blushed under his admiring gaze. Nervously clearing her throat, she said, "I'm Myka Bering. My father's the new editor of the _Journal_."

The sheriff rounded his lips in an O but his whistle, if he whistled, was a silent one. "The new newspaperman. We knew you were coming but didn't know when." He waved his arm toward the dusty street and the darkened doorways of the buildings on either side. In any town, there were usually a few old men passing the time outside the general store, spitting tobacco and regaling each other with tall tales heard a million times before. But there were no men squatting on their heels, no children chasing each other down the walks. The chairs outside the barbershop were empty, and even the saloon was quiet. Above its doors was a sign, its lettering faded by the sun but still readable, the Rusty Spur.

"Usually we're a little livelier around here, but it's been awful hot and dry this summer," the sheriff said apologetically. He fingered his hat as he and Myka stood in an awkward silence. Bringing himself to with a jerk, he exclaimed, "You must think I have no manners. May I get you a glass of water or lemonade?" He nodded at the store across the street. "Can't promise you that it'll be cool, but it should cut down the dust."

"No, thank you." Myka had started to blush again at the sheriff's clumsy courtliness. "But if you could tell me where I might find Mr. Wells, I would appreciate it."

"Mr. Wells?" The sheriff was puzzled.

"H. Wells. I don't know whether the H stands for Herbert or Harold or, or Horatio." Myka noticed that her small joke, her very tiny joke, elicited no answering smile from the sheriff. "The publisher of the _Journal_?" She added hurriedly.

"Oh," Sheriff Lattimer said. Then "Oh" again, this time louder and in recognition. "That H. Wells," he said, his face seizing in a grimace. "You must mean Mrs. Wells." He darted a quick look at the saloon, then glanced back at Myka. "We should get you out of the sun. Why don't you wait in the store while I try to find Mrs. Wells?"

H. Wells, their publisher, a woman? Although she was still revolving the novelty of it in her mind, Myka hadn't missed the significance of the sheriff's look at the saloon. Publisher and what? Card sharp? Bartender? Then Myka remembered what women usually did in a saloon. Surely not. Certain that her cheeks were flaming at this point, Myka hoped that her voice didn't betray her embarrassment. "If Mrs. Wells is in that . . . establishment then that is where I'll find her." Gathering her skirt, she brushed past the sheriff and started crossing the street.

"Ah. . . .geez. . . ah, Miss Bering?" The sheriff loped ahead of her, backpedaling as she continued toward the saloon undeterred. "Really, the Rusty Spur is no place for a lady."

She stopped, looking at him sternly. She didn't know this Mrs. Wells, but she felt insulted on her behalf. "Sheriff Lattimer, are you implying that Mrs. Wells isn't a lady?"

He swept off his hat and frantically scratched his head, as if he dug hard enough he might be able to pull out the proper response. "Ah, no, you see, Mrs. Wells, she's a lady. Just, uh, a different kind of one."

"And how is she different?"

"She's an English lady?" The sheriff managed to make the statement of fact sound like a question and his eyes pleaded with Myka to take his words as sufficient answer for why Mrs. Wells was to be found in the Rusty Spur and not some place more suitable.

Myka bit her lip to keep from smiling. It was perfectly acceptable for Mrs. Wells to while away her time in a saloon because she was English. How could she remain indignant in the face of such utter illogic? Pointing his finger at the side of his head and twirling it in a circle, the sheriff leaned in, saying, "The English, you know, they can be a little cuckoo."

"Cuckoo or no, I need to speak with Mrs. Wells." Once more Myka brushed past him and he scrambled to draw even with her. She had no intention of telling him that she had been in more saloons than she cared to count, a number of them considerably more disreputable looking than the Rusty Spur, helping her father home or, when he was too drunk to stand on his own power, relying on some good Samaritan to shoulder Warren Bering's gaunt frame and carry him home. Sometimes the good Samaritan had wanted Myka to express her gratitude in a more tangible form than a heartfelt "Thank you" and she had learned the effectiveness of a sharp jab of her elbow to the man's stomach or, if necessary, a swift thrust of her knee to his groin.

The sheriff cut in front of her to swing the door open, and Myka was accosted by the familiar smell of sawdust and stale beer. The bartender, a middle-aged man with a two-day beard and an apron that looked as though it had been worn three days too long, chatted with the saloon's lone patron, a man in a shiny black suit coat, an equally shiny black bowler hat on the seat next to him. A drummer, perhaps, waiting for the heat to break before heading onto the next town. The bag on the stool beside him carried something he would hawk to his future customers, patent medicines or ladies' accessories. Although there was nothing prepossessing about the saloon's interior, the floor looked relatively clean and the poker tables, while scarred and mismatched, were free of empty bottles. Myka surreptitiously moved her feet; they didn't stick to the floor. That was something. A stairway led to an upper level and hanging over the railing were two women. They were wearing close-fitting dresses with short skirts and low-cut bodices, and they were avidly watching her and the sheriff. Myka couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at the sheriff as a third woman squeezed herself between the other two and waved down at him.

"Pete! Pete!" She called, running down the steps and launching herself at the sheriff.

Smiling tightly, the sheriff tried to remove himself from the woman's enthusiastic greeting. "Whoa, whoa," he said, trying to free his neck from the arms the girl had clasped around it, shooting agonized glances at Myka who surveyed the floor with great interest. "Maggie, uh, Miss Anderson, would you—"

Maggie slapped him playfully. "Miss Anderson! That's not what you called me last night. It was 'Oh, Maggie' this and 'Oh, Maggie' that." She trailed off, taking in Myka in one long, coolly assessing look. "Who do you have with you, Petey?"

Petey. Laughter bubbled wildly in Myka's throat, but she forced it down. A last-chance job in a small town at the end of the universe where their publisher ran a whorehouse and she was being sized up by this brazen slip of a girl – and found wanting. Myka began to choke on the absurdity of it and brought her hand to her lips. The sheriff firmly set Maggie down and snapped his fingers at the bartender, "Freddie, a glass of water here, please." Turning to Maggie, he said pleasantly but with an underlying steeliness that even Myka heard through her coughing, "Go get Mrs. Wells."

Maggie did as he said but not without a disgusted flounce and a muttered "Why didn't you just say you were here on business?"

The bartender brought over a glass of water and Myka smiled her thanks. He grinned back at her until he caught a warning look from the sheriff, which had him speedily returning to the bar. The drummer, who had been idly running his eyes over Myka, just as swiftly picked up his conversation with Freddie where they had left it off. The sheriff tapped his hat in frustration. Seeing the two women still watching them from upstairs, he said, "Sallie, Glenda. Warm day, isn't it?" They tittered at his discomfort, and then their giggles died away as a woman emerged from an office in the back of the room.

At first, Myka didn't notice her. She was busy gulping down the water, which was warm and brassy-tasting but wet. But she felt the somnolence that had lain over the room begin to lift, as if an electric charge had been shot through the saloon. Resisting the temptation to see if her skin was prickling into goosebumps, she raised her eyes as the woman approached them. The woman was neither tall nor imposing and dressed plainly in a black skirt and a wine-colored blouse, but she carried herself with an air of authority and when she spoke, she spoke with the confidence of someone who expected people to listen to her. "Sheriff Lattimer, you wished to see me?"

Her presence seemed to have an effect even on the sheriff, who stopped fidgeting with his hat and glancing distractedly around the room and fixed his unhappy look on her. "Miss Bering wanted to see you, and she insisted on coming in."

"We are a business, Sheriff," she said, amused. "Our doors are open to everyone." Turning to Myka, she said, "You have me at a disadvantage, Miss Bering."

It wasn't only the accent, although the way she lingered over certain words, drawing them out, had a certain richness to it. But Myka had heard English accents before, some plummier than this woman's. Some might liken the woman's voice to honey, and while Myka might concede the smoothness, she recoiled at the thought that anyone's voice could convey that much sweetness. The image that came to Myka's mind was an apple. The woman's voice felt smooth and round and firm, the way an apple felt in Myka's hand. And like an apple, Myka instinctively wanted to cup it, to curl her fingers around it. But who could hold the sound of someone's voice in her hand? It would be like trying to capture "You have me at a disadvantage" between her two hands like a firefly and hold it to her ear. It was nonsensical, and the only reason she was having such a flight of fancy was because she was dizzy from the heat. She wanted to sit down, but she couldn't betray any sign of weakness in front of the _Journal_'s publisher. The Berings' weaknesses would become all too apparent later on.

Wincing at her sudden hoarseness, Myka said, "I'm Warren Bering's daughter" and looked at Mrs. Wells as steadily as she could. But that carried its own dangers since Mrs. Wells' eyes were so dark that pupils were barely discernible from irises, and Myka was overwhelmed by the feeling that if she didn't look away she would drown. "He's, he's the new editor of the _Journal_," she heard herself stammering.

"Yes, I'm aware of that," Mrs. Wells said, amusement threading through her voice again. Then her hand slid against Myka's, smaller and, Myka noticed with mortification, far better tended to than her own, but capable of a surprisingly sturdy grip, and they were shaking hands like two businessmen closing a deal. "I'm Helena Wells."


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: I should mention the usual disclaimers – I don't own Warehouse 13, have no rights to its characters, etc. Also, thanks to my beta, GiggleBlanket.**

Chapter Two

Helena had suggested they go to the _Journal_'s offices and discuss her expectations for the paper there. She would like to meet Warren Bering as well, but Myka shifted her feet and looked away and said that the long train ride had exhausted her father. Besides their living quarters were a mess, overflowing with trunks and boxes. Helen had immediately apologized, annoyed with herself for making such a gaffe. Granted she hadn't expected the Berings to arrive as soon as they did, but that was no excuse for thinking they would be ready for guests, even if one of them was Mr. Bering's employer.

But they couldn't stay here either. Helena had little respect for the conventions that regarded saloons and whorehouses as necessary evils. Oftentimes more business was conducted where men drank and otherwise enjoyed themselves than in oak-paneled boardrooms. Yet she recognized her obligation to remove Myka from the Rusty Spur as soon as possible, and if she had been tempted to forget, she had the disapproving face of Sheriff Lattimer in front of her.

"Sheriff, I believe you'll find some of Leena's sugar cookies in my office." Helena never tired of seeing how quickly the sheriff's expression could change when cookies were mentioned. Replacing the pained look he wore whenever he encountered Helena in the saloon, doubly pained this time because he was accompanied by Myka, was the greedy anticipation of a five-year old child. "Please rest assured that I will take good care of Miss Bering."

Torn between the cookies and his desire to guard Myka's virtue, which Helena wanted to tell him was in no danger of being threatened, the sheriff stared doubtfully at her until Myka smiled her encouragement. "I'll be all right. Thank you so much for your help, Sheriff Lattimer."

After another doubtful look at Helena, the sheriff left Myka's side only to stop a few feet away and ask, "You won't mind if I drop by sometime and check in on you and your father, will you?" Myka shook her head, her cheeks reddening, and Helena resisted the temptation to roll her eyes. It was unprecedented for the sheriff to let anyone slow his progress when food was in sight, but marvel though that was, Helena had no patience for any budding romance between the town's lawman and her new editor's daughter.

Though she could understand his interest. Myka was pretty. Very pretty, Helena acknowledged. Other women might despair over the profusion of curls, Helena suspected that Myka herself might be one of those women, but Helena liked how her hair lifted in the breeze eddying at the Spur's entrance and how occasional strands trailed across Myka's jaw. Myka would tuck the errant hair behind her ear only to have it spring out and feather against her skin. Her hair was a dull brown in the Spur's interior, but Helena knew that it would display flashes of gold and red in the sunlight. Myka probably rued its plainness, wishing, like many brunettes, that it was blond instead. Almost absently, Helena gave her own hair a loving pat. Clearly ill at ease, eyes roaming everywhere but touching on nothing, most especially Helena, Myka would cut a graceful figure were she more relaxed. She was tall but carried herself well, her back straight and her shoulders showing no inclination to slump. Myka's dress was old-fashioned in style, but it couldn't disguise a figure that was slender yet womanly, in Helena's estimation, professional estimation, of course.

Helena suppressed a sigh. Really, the decision had been made for her, there was only one place they could go. "Miss Bering, if you would accompany me home, I believe we might be more comfortable there." Helena didn't like to conduct business in her home. She had spent too many years having to treat her various lodgings as places of business, and now that she had a true home, a two-story brick house that she had purchased shortly upon arriving in Sweetwater and spent a considerable amount of money redesigning to her liking, she wanted to keep the daily concerns that came with running a saloon and a few women of pleasure out of it. Until the _Journal_'s former editor decided to retire to live with his daughter in Iowa, she hadn't had to worry about the paper. While Ralph Sanderson's command of basic grammar and punctuation wasn't all that she could have hoped for, he showed himself to be an adept salesman of advertising space, and when given a choice between a graceful style and a profit, Helena would usually choose the latter. Which made her decision to hire Warren Bering all the more impulsive. But there had been something about his letter of inquiry, his passion for providing his readers with a balanced account of events important to them, his desire to encourage them to express their views – it had stirred Helena's heart and though she wasn't sure how deeply reasoned an article on crop conditions or the minutes of the latest town council meeting needed to be, she had indulged in a bit of unwonted idealism to think that the citizens of Sweetwater might benefit from it.

She raised her parasol as soon as the Spur's doors swung closed behind them. Any vanity she might have had about her appearance had hardened over the years to an unsentimental recognition of which of her features were attractive and which weren't. And the fairness of her skin, particularly in contrast with the darkness of her coloring, had always been a source of compliments. Even now, when she could let her skin turn leathery under the sun if she wished, she continued to protect it; although she hadn't had to rely on the delicacy of her complexion to win her any favors recently, there was no sense in damaging an asset. Sidling a look at Myka, Helena mused that perhaps Miss Bering ought to give some thought to guarding her skin from the sun, even though she had to admit that the scattering of freckles across Myka's cheeks and nose was charming. Holding her parasol higher and closer to Myka, Helena offered, "Would you like to share? It's not much, but it does provide some relief."

Myka's eyes widened, almost in alarm, Helena thought. "Thank you but no, Mrs. Wells. I'm fine."

Helena retracted her parasol, nettled at the rebuff. Proper young women like Miss Bering weren't accustomed to rubbing elbows with saloonkeepers and madams. Having been a proper young woman herself once upon a time, Helena had a fair idea of the thoughts that must be running through Myka's mind. And for the first time in a very long while, Helena felt ashamed, seeing herself from Myka's perspective. Nice brick homes and parasols to protect her skin and clothes made for her and shipped straight from New York (although Myka didn't know that) – how did the saying go? You couldn't make a silk purse from a sow's ear. Helena knew that Myka saw her as no better, and in all probability worse, than the prostitutes who worked for her.

Seeing her home come into view, Helena didn't feel her usual surge of pleasure. This afternoon, in Myka's presence, all she saw was its flaws. Grand for Sweetwater certainly, it would be nondescript in a city, neither large nor distinguished, the lawn brown, and the shade trees spindly, the shadows they cast mottled with sunlight. Reflecting on how she had acquired the home, bought on the cheap from the former president of Sweetwater's bank, who was only two steps ahead of a mob of angry, defrauded customers, she found no humor in it as she ordinarily did. She had taken advantage of someone else's misfortune and, moreover, deprived the town of having the man brought to justice; he had taken her cash and almost literally leapt onto the train leaving for Chicago. Opening the gate to the stone walkway leading to the front door, Helena said brusquely, "This way, if you please, Miss Bering."

Leena was at the top of the stairs to the second floor when Helena and Myka entered the foyer. "Hel – Mrs. Wells," she caught herself. She curiously but discreetly surveyed Myka as she descended.

"This is Miss Bering," Helena said as Leena took her parasol and placed it in a stand. "Her father is the new editor of the _Journal_." Leena knew everything about the _Journal_ just as she knew most everything there was to know about Helena, but this was the fiction they had decided upon when they arrived in Sweetwater, that Leena was Helena's housekeeper. It answered the question of why a white woman would be traveling in the company of a black woman and, just as importantly, excused the familiarity with which they treated one another, but Helena hated the necessity for the pretense, and she bridled at the submissiveness Leena felt called upon to display on the rare occasions when Helena brought home a guest. Helena looked at Myka, expecting her to be studiously indifferent to Leena's presence, as if she were no more important or worthy of notice than the umbrella stand, or worse, gape-mouthed with astonishment at the sight of a black woman. But Myka was neither. She was regarding Leena with interest, yes, but with no hint of condescension.

Smiling warmly, Myka said, "I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name."

Didn't catch it because Helena hadn't thought to mention it. She burned with embarrassment as Leena said quietly, "My name is Leena, Miss Bering."

"I'm very pleased to meet you, Leena."

Turning to Helena, Leena prompted her, "Refreshments in the parlor, Mrs. Wells?" Helena didn't miss the sardonic gleam in her eyes, although nothing could be read from Leena's carefully schooled expression; she was merely the housekeeper awaiting her mistress's order.

"Yes, please." Helena cast an irritated glance at her back as Leena retreated down the hall toward the kitchen. Turning to usher her guest into the parlor, Helena glimpsed Myka crossing the foyer into the library. She followed, noticing how reverently Myka approached the book shelves, touching the volumes lightly, disbelievingly. She began to work one of the books out from the shelf but stopped, spinning around with her hand clapped to her mouth.

"Please forgive me, Mrs. Wells. I had no business coming in here without your permission. But it's so lovely, and you have so many books. . . . " She trailed off, mesmerized.

Helena couldn't help but smile at Myka's obvious delight. "Feel free to borrow as many as you'd like."

Myka stepped closer, grinning so broadly that Helena feared she might be enveloped in a hug. Stiffening in advance of the embrace, Helena waited to be crushed against Myka's faded dress only to watch as she whirled away, coltishly, long limbs appearing to move independently of one another. Myka must have been like this as a girl, all elbows and knees and flying curls, and Helena wondered with a sadness the years hadn't blunted if Christina had shown the same endearing awkwardness, if she had looked as flushed and happy. Myka, with a shy look at Helena, placed a book in the crook of her arm when her attention was drawn to the books on the shelf above her. "Baudelaire in French and Goethe," she glanced at Helena for confirmation that her pronunciation was correct "in German. How many languages do you know, Mrs. Wells?"

"I have a passing acquaintance with several but know only a few well enough to read." Though Helena was grateful to be able to steer her thoughts away from Christina, memories of sitting in her father's library with a succession of tutors, each more pedantic than the last, were hardly more pleasant. How she had wanted to attend school like Charles, but their father had his own ideas of what was the appropriate education for a girl of her status. The bookshelves, the large mahogany desk in front of the windows at the back of the room, the fireplace – it struck Helena that she had created a facsimile of her father's library in a house thousands of miles away. But she was the one who determined what books it held, how far afield her desire for knowledge would take her.

Gesturing at the shelves lining the walls, Myka asked, "Just what other treasures do you have in here?"

"I leave that to you to find out, Miss Bering." Helena kept her eyes from straying to the shelves in the far corner of the room, which held a collection of erotica. While Myka's expression as she stared at the books was not unlike Sheriff Lattimer's when cookies were present, Helena suspected that it would take Myka quite some time before she read her way to the 'naughty pictures' section of the library.

Leena entered then, carrying a tray heavy with plates of finger sandwiches and cookies and a dainty teapot that Helena didn't even know she had. The library wasn't designed to host an afternoon tea, but between the three of them they managed to arrange chairs and side tables so that Helena and Myka were facing each other, although their tea cups and plates were at an awkward reach. Unthinkingly Helena had joined Leena in guiding the chairs across the thick oriental rugs, and Myka hadn't seemed to find it strange that Helena was working with her housekeeper rather than waiting for Leena to complete the rearranging herself. Myka had set her book down and divested the tray of its china, pouring the tea into the cups and using a pair of tongs that Helena had last seen in the sugar bowl to place sandwiches and cookies on individual plates.

'That will be all, Leena' hovered on Helena's lips until she realized how ridiculous that would sound with them both slightly out of breath from pushing the chairs together. This was not the way Helena's mother had organized the afternoon tea; it was always held at the same time in the same room. Sandwiches were cut at precise angles and the tea, always Earl Grey, was served at a certain temperature. Woe betide the poor servant who erred on any of these points. In a voice chill enough to ice over the steaming tea, Mrs. Wells would thank the poor quaking girl for her efforts and then ensure that she was banished to the laundry.

"Would you like something besides tea, Miss Bering?" Leena asked, something impish twitching at the corners of her mouth. "Mrs. Wells always prefers her tea hot, but I have a pitcher of lemon water that works wonders on a day like today."

Helena looked up at Leena from underneath her eyelashes. Prefers her tea hot, as if she made it all day every day for her. Helena couldn't remember the last time Leena had made her tea. Mornings Helena was the one who filled the kettle and warmed it on the stove. "Hot tea is perfect, Leena. Thank you," Myka said sweetly, blowing across the top of her cup.

"Please let me know if there's anything else, Mrs. Wells." Leena only smiled as Helena gave her a meaningful look. Glimpsing the book that Myka had tucked between her and the side of her chair, Leena added, "I'm glad Mrs. Wells has found someone who shares her love of books." Leena's smile didn't waver although Helena's stare had grown murderous in its intensity.

Myka's cheeks became rosy but whether that was because she was blushing yet again or from the heat of the tea, Helena couldn't tell. Gently setting the cup on its saucer, Myka said, "My father and I would appreciate knowing more about your expectations for the _Journal_. In your letter, you said that you wanted it to serve as a forum for 'lively discussion,' but that can mean different things to different people."

Helena bit appreciatively into one of the sandwiches. It was a plain butter sandwich, but Leena made the best bread and how she managed to keep butter from liquefying into a soup in this heat, let alone still taste nearly as creamy as when it was churned, was nothing short of miraculous. She would have to forgive her for the teasing in front of Myka. Tempted to devour the rest of the sandwich before responding, Helena recalled the example of her mother and politely finished her bite. "All I require is that what the paper publishes is well researched and well reasoned. No one should take exception to that."

"But people do." Myka insisted quietly.

"You're referring to Hartsville, and you want to know if I will support your father if something he writes creates a firestorm."

"Will you?"

"If it's true." Seeing a flash of indignation in Myka's eyes," Helena said, "Which it will be, I'm sure, then yes, of course."

"That's what the _Beacon_ said. But the minute the mine owners began to protest that people would start agitating for better working conditions, the publisher demanded that my father retract the editorial, and when he wouldn't, the paper fired him. Workers were dying in that mine, Mrs. Wells. Basic safety precautions weren't being followed, and when the men complained, they were threatened with the loss of their jobs." Myka had reached for her cup and was holding it so tightly that Helena was afraid it might shatter between her fingers.

"Papers are businesses, Miss Bering, and I have no doubt that the mine owners, if they didn't already own an interest in the paper, certainly brought financial pressure to bear on the _Beacon_. I'm in no way supporting what they did, but I can appreciate the difficult situation they must have been in." Helena eyed another sandwich but saw that Myka hadn't even finished her cookie. She shouldn't add to her very obvious sins by being a glutton in front of her. "I own 100% of the _Journal_, Miss Bering, and while I want my paper to make a profit, I am not dependent on its income. Should your father take an unpopular position, I will not crumble."

Myka looked heartened but not completely convinced. She absently traced the rim of her cup with her finger. "It would be difficult, I think, to be a businesswoman when so many of the business owners are men. In my very limited experience, I've found many of them to be impatient when they've had to interact with me rather than my father. They tended to belittle my opinion even though my father would say the exact same thing the next time they met."

Helena understood the point Myka was not-so-subtly making. "Yes, they can be overbearing and arrogant and unwilling to listen. But I've been accused of the same myself." She noted Myka's small smile. "I don't want to give the impression that there aren't powerful business interests in this part of the territory. There are, and they have definite ideas about what is important and how it should be communicated. But I know them well, and they haven't managed to make me knuckle under to them yet." Realizing she was going to sound boastful, she nonetheless couldn't hide the pride in her voice. "I'm a powerful business interest in my own right, Miss Bering, and though I know that you have to take my support on trust, please know that no one can force me to do something I don't want to do."

Myka rose, depositing her uneaten cookie and cup and saucer on the table. "Thank you, Mrs. Wells, for taking the time to talk with me. I'm sure I've taken up enough of your day, and I should see how my father is doing." She placed the book under her arm, and Helena saw enough of it to recognize that Myka had borrowed a copy of Dickens's _Hard Times_. How appropriate. She followed Myka to the door.

"I intend to visit the _Journal_ once you and your father have settled in, and I'll introduce you to some of the businessmen you'll be. . . working . . with." Butting heads with, more likely, Helena suspected. Oddly enough, however, she looked forward to the complaints that would be coming her way about the new editor of the paper and his undoubtedly "newfangled" ideas. Life in Sweetwater had been dull as of late.

Myka hesitated in the doorway. "Was . . . is your husband from Sweetwater, Mrs. Wells?"

The phrasing had been uncertain but the curiosity in Myka's eyes was unabashed. Helena was struck by how light they were. Green, the soft pale green of spring in bloom. But there was nothing suggestive of gamboling lambs and bunny rabbits about Myka Bering. She was young and no doubt still innocent in the traditional sense but not naïve. She had all but asked Helena if she was really married. In the past Helena had fended off more discreet queries and usually gave no thought to what people made of the absence of a Mr. Wells, but she found herself saying, "There is no Mr. Wells, Miss Bering, nor has there ever been, unless we're speaking of my father or brother."

Myka held her gaze, and this time no blush crept up her cheeks. "Then I'm at a loss for what brought you to Sweetwater, Mrs. Wells, because it seems too small to hold you."

Helena remembered the night three years ago when she had plaintively asked Leena where she was to go and Leena had opened a book of maps and, without looking, plunged her finger toward a great barren stretch of land in the center north of the continent. She wondered what Myka would say if she said 'Leena's finger on a map.' Instead she responded, "The spirit of adventure, I suppose, Miss Bering."

"Adventure," Myka repeated in a murmur. "Embracing change. . . ." She looked away from Helena toward the town, her face lovely in profile. "Good day, Mrs. Wells."

"Good day, Miss Bering." Helena watched as Myka passed through the gate, closing it behind her. She didn't realize that Leena was standing behind her until she felt a hand on her shoulder.

"I like her," Leena said.

Helena shrugged, assuming an indifference she didn't feel. "She seems a nice young woman. I hope that Sweetwater will be good to her and her father."

Leena wasn't deceived. "I think she'll be good for you, Helena." But she didn't expand on her comment. Helena remained at the door, hearing faint clinking sounds from the library as Leena put the dishes back on the tray, and continued to look in the direction Myka had taken long after she disappeared from view.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Thanks for reading and thanks for your comments. Thanks, as always, to GiggleBlanket for being my beta. The ending is a little more leading than I had intended, but this was growing into a huge chapter, and I needed to put in a break somewhere.**

Chapter Three

Myka adapted to life in Sweetwater more quickly than she thought she would. Part of that had to do with her father. While he still nipped from his flask and squirreled away bottles brought home from the Rusty Spur, he was relatively sober most of the day and threw himself into running the _Journal_ with more enthusiasm than Myka had expected. When Helena Wells paid a visit to the office, he greeted her with a steady hand and eye and recommended some changes to the paper's style and content to which she readily agreed. As he described his vision for the paper, one that would make room for more local news as well as an expanded section for opinions on various issues of the day, Myka was proud of him. He wasn't quite the man she remembered from her childhood; he didn't speak with the same fire and, at times, he seemed unsure of himself in Helena's presence, but Helena appreciated his commitment to the paper, or so she said.

Those dark eyes took in everything, from the bundles of paper waiting to be fed into the press to the partial layout of the next issue. Helena's gaze frequently lighted on Myka, and Myka, though she tried to keep her attention fixed on her father, couldn't resist the pull of the other woman's interest. She no longer felt she might drown when she met Helena's eyes, but she saw something in their depths that left her feeling restless and unsettled. She had been to Helena's home a few times since their first meeting, dropping off books she had borrowed and taking new ones with her. Helena had been warm and gracious, asking her how she was finding Sweetwater and chatting with her about the novels she had read, but Myka heard herself fumbling for words and desperately hoped that she was saying something intelligent. Walking around the library, she had noticed a photograph on the desk, which showed a man with Helena's dark eyes and hair standing behind two women sitting on a loveseat. One of the women was much older, the man's wife, while the other woman, girl really, appeared to be their daughter. Her resemblance to Helena was striking, the same oval-shaped face, the same set to her mouth and the same slight lift of her chin; her eyes narrowed in the way that Helena's would when she was amused. Perhaps the photographer had said something funny or maybe the girl, like any adolescent, was enjoying her belief that she didn't so much obey her parents as humor them.

Myka blurted on one visit, "She's your niece?"

Helena's head snapped around, but she quietly answered, "Yes, my niece Christina."

"She's lovely. She looks like you." Myka prayed that she wasn't blushing but knew better from the sudden heat in her cheeks.

But Helena had turned away from the photograph, trailing her fingers along a row of books. "Her father, I'm sure, doesn't appreciate the likeness." Helena had said it wryly, but Myka sensed an old bitterness behind the comment.

Realizing that it was not a topic Helena cared to discuss, Myka didn't ask the questions raised by the photograph, but she couldn't help glancing at it every time she was in the library, wondering what had taken Helena so far away from her family. Myka acknowledged the envy that was mixed in with her curiosity. Having never been separated from her father for more than a few days, she wondered if Helena found the distance freeing or lonely. As if she knew that Myka's thoughts were about her and not the stack of books she held in the crook of her arm, Helena would occasionally turn a speculative look on her, as though she could hear all the questions racing through Myka's mind.

Myka had never felt so uneasy, been so jumpy around someone before and yet, at the same time, anxious to see her again. Myka's response made no sense to her, and she was alternately frustrated and disturbed that she had no answer for it. On the other hand, she never felt less than at home with Sheriff Lattimer. Or Pete, as he insisted she call him. "Even my jailbirds call me Pete," he joked. But she had learned from experience the costs of being overfamiliar with an unattached man so "Sheriff Lattimer" or "Mr. Lattimer" he remained. He stopped by nearly every day, and if Myka's father swayed a little when he led Pete into the parlor or smelled of whiskey, Pete didn't seem to take notice. Pete would sit on the high-backed sofa with its tilted cushion, boots firmly planted on the floor to prevent him from sliding off, and ask after Myka's day. Myka knew her skills as a cook were modest at best but she always tried to have some extra sweet on hand for when Pete visited, and no matter that it might be lopsided or runny or burned, he was always appreciative. She wasn't sure that he was courting her, but her father was certain of Pete's intentions, growling good-naturedly about her "suitor" and muttering just loudly enough for Myka to hear that "he's a damn sight better than that Martino fella."

Myka was never discomfited meeting Pete's eyes. They were almost as dark as Helena's, but Myka imagined that she could see through them to the essence of Pete himself, loyal, steadfast, kind. He might poke fun at his being the "law in Sweetwater," but Myka had seen him more than once defuse an argument between a couple of cowboys stumbling out of the Rusty Spur, talking a stream of nonsense that had them blinking at him rather than each other as he nimbly removed their guns from their holsters. She looked forward to his visits, and the part of her that fretted about when her father's drinking or a flap about something published in the _Journal_ would get him fired screamed at her not to let such a good man get away. But no matter how warmly he looked at her – when he thought she wouldn't notice – or how sincerely he offered her a compliment, she couldn't bring herself to encourage his pursuit of her. Each time that Pete hinted he would enjoy taking her out for an evening stroll, she would jump up from her chair and dart about the tiny parlor, picking up their cups and saucers and checking after her father in the office. She would then return to her chair and take up her sewing, which, like cooking, she labored over rather than enjoyed, and change the topic of conversation from how pleasant the night air was to the newest desperadoes on Pete's most wanted list. Eventually Pete would rise from the sofa, stiff from having locked his knees to keep his seat on the cushion, and bid her, and a loudly snoring Mr. Bering, good night.

Myka became acquainted with other residents of Sweetwater as well, the proprietor of the general store, the livery owner and his wife, the telegraph operator. Some stopped by the _Journal_'s office out of curiosity, but others she met at Sweetwater's church, a clapboard structure on the opposite end of town from the railroad station. She never missed the Sunday service, and she was usually able to coax her father into joining her. They would sit in a pew toward the middle, and Myka had a friendly greeting for the families as they went down the aisle or took seats in nearby pews. She would add her voice to the rest of the congregation's as they toiled through the hymns, and she would hold her Bible open and bend her head attentively as the pastor intoned his sermon. If her father's head began to loll, she would nudge him awake. But she couldn't have said which was her favorite hymn to sing or provided an opinion on the sermon other than her standard "It gave me food for thought" because her mind was always elsewhere. Myka attended the church not because she was looking for spiritual insight or solace – she had stopped looking for those long ago – but because it would make her and her father part of the community more quickly, and it would be harder for the people who saw them every Sunday to let them be run out of town. At least that was her hope.

So Myka moved her lips in prayer, but she was thinking about the content for the next issue of the _Journal_ or the latest book she had borrowed from Helena's library. Occasionally she daydreamed about the man who, while not rescuing her from her father, would be willing to share the burden of caring for him with her. She never saw his features with any clarity and other than being a "good provider" she had no words to describe him, but she assumed that was only because she had not yet met him. More and more frequently, however, her thoughts were taken up with Helena and the endless questions she had about her. Sometimes as Myka drifted from thought to thought, one preoccupation would blur into another, and the man of her dreams would become more distinct, suddenly having dark hair and dark eyes, and for a moment she might think this future husband could be Pete until the eyes became less kind and more sardonic and she would recognize Helena in his faintly haughty regard. When she first had that realization, she had let her Bible crash to the floor, waking up her father and drawing to her the attention of everyone in the church. Now when thoughts of Helena would intrude into her daydreams, Myka told herself, not without a certain pleasure in the rigor of her own sternness, that it was only because she could fashion no one worthier of her devotion than another version of Sam Martino, and Helena, with a character as interesting as it was disreputable, reminded her of him.

When Sunday worship ended and Myka and her father would join the others filing toward the door, she would sometimes see Helena and Leena in a pew at the back of the church, Helena elegantly attired as always, the dresses modest in color and design but fitted perfectly to her. Occasionally some of the girls from the Rusty Spur would be with them, and Myka noticed how the good ladies of the congregation would hold their skirts aside and look anywhere but at the pew they occupied. She always made it a point to stop for a moment and exchange greetings with Helena and Leena, acknowledging the girls as well. Helena's eyes would track the wide circuit the other ladies made around them, and when she would turn her head in response to Myka's hello, her eyes danced with a wicked glint and her inquiries after Myka's health carried a mocking edge, but her decorum rarely slipped. Except one Sunday when the pastor unexpectedly veered from a story of Paul to a harangue about Mary Magdalene, and Myka counted not one or two but all five of the Spur's girls sitting next to Helena and Leena. When Myka was chatting with them later, Helena had said, a crooked smile on her lips, "Jesus may have forgiven poor Mary, but I do believe Pastor Wallace is still on the fence. What do you think, Miss Bering?" Leena had clucked disapprovingly and Myka, much to her chagrin, blushed in response.

Myka's father had taken her arm then, urging her none too gently away from Helena. "I know she's our employer, but she's not a woman you should be seen associating with, Myka."

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask her father if it were any better for her reputation for her to be seen taking him home from jails and saloons, but she smothered the impulse and nodded in sham acquiescence.

As for the men who led Sweetwater, Myka and her father were introduced to them through Helena's intercession. She took them to the bank, where the Berings spent an excruciatingly long 20 minutes listening to the bank's president, Mr. Jeffries, discourse about the need to ensure that loans carry the proper collateral. Then the next day she arranged for them to attend the town council's meeting. Mr. Bering had protested Myka's attending the meeting with the bank president, and he vociferously objected to her going to meet the town council with him. When he had blustered that Myka's participation in the _Journal_ was limited to gathering news of weddings and births and other "women's affairs," Helena had countered, "But she's the face of the _Journal_ when you're not present, isn't she?" At Mr. Bering's unhappy nod, she had continued in a tone that would not be brooked, "Then she'll go with you."

The town council held their meetings in the offices of James MacPherson, a local rancher and Sweetwater's sole attorney. Mr. MacPherson's offices were on the floor above the doctor's office, which was, conveniently enough, just down the street from the Rusty Spur. A disruptive patron getting the bum's rush out the Spur's doors didn't have far to go to have a bloody nose or black eye tended to. The Berings followed Helena up the stairs and stood behind her uncertainly as she opened the door that displayed, in black lettering across the glass, James MacPherson, Attorney-at Law. Mr. MacPherson's secretary, an owlish looking young man, with wire-rimmed spectacles sitting at a slant on the bridge of his nose and a distractingly large mole on his cheek, led them to a room down a short passageway. Compared to the reception area they had just been in, with its uncomfortable looking chairs and ancient carpet, this room was luxuriously furnished with chairs upholstered in plush fabric and dominated by a large table, on top of which were a box of cigars and a tray holding decanters ringed by glasses. Men had already gathered around the table, selecting cigars and nominating one among them to start pouring drinks. They looked displeased at the Berings' entrance until they caught sight of Helena, who was thanking the secretary for his assistance.

They tugged their waistcoats over their bellies and smoothed their whiskers, reminding Myka of a flock of preening birds. Helena spoke to each of them, asking after their families and working in her introduction of the Berings amid their rough gallantries. Their words were courtly, but their hands first hovered and then landed with a possessive splaying of fingers on her back while their glances kept dipping below the neck of Helena's dress. Mr. Bering they acknowledged with slight interest, and Myka merited only an appraising look or two, too dull a hen for their attention when paired with Helena Wells. Smoke from their cigars began to fill the room, and the councilmen's faces grew redder and their voices louder as, one after another, the decanters were emptied, but no one tried to start the meeting. Eventually the door to a private office opened, and the councilmen fell silent, taking chairs with the alacrity of students hoping to impress their headmaster.

The man who entered the room wasn't a handsome man nor a particularly young one, but in his pearl gray suit coat and trousers, which seemed to shimmer against the black broadcloth worn by the other men, he would cut a fine figure in the opinion of many, and he obviously thought so himself, accepting the greetings of the councilmen with the measured gravity of a royal thrust among the commoners. He surveyed Myka and her father with mild curiosity before approaching Helena and lifting her hand to his lips.

Myka had only ever read about such gestures, and it didn't look nearly as romantic in reality as it had in her imagination. It was too extravagant for this room and its audience, and Myka had the fleeting thought that the man was using the courtesy to mock Helena more than flatter her, and Helena must have had a similar feeling because the muscles along her jaw tightened as she withdrew her hand from his. "As always, Mrs. Wells, it is a delight to see you," he said. "What is it that I can do for you?"

"I've brought the new editor of the _Journal_ and his daughter to meet the town council. What better way for them to become acquainted with the concerns of Sweetwater than to meet the men in whose care the town is entrusted?" She said, smiling sweetly upon the councilmen in their chairs. Myka could almost hear a fluttering of wings as thumbs were tucked into waistcoats and chests swelled under the implicit compliment.

"MacPherson," one of the men chuckled, "I've said it before and I'll say it again, we ought to make Mrs. Wells an honorary member of the council. I'd much rather have her pretty face next to me than the ugly mug of Roberts here." With an excess of good humor, he slapped the shoulder of his neighbor.

Mr. MacPherson smiled thinly but didn't respond. He made no motion to cross the room to greet the Berings, and Myka realized before her father did that Mr. MacPherson expected them to come to him. She inclined her head slightly in Mr. MacPherson's direction and discreetly pulled at her father's sleeve. With a grimace he directed at the ceiling, Mr. Bering advanced with hand outstretched. Mr. MacPherson briefly clasped it and sketched a bow in Myka's direction before refocusing his attention on Helena. "They are more than welcome to stay for the meeting, as are you, Mrs. Wells." At that, a few of the councilmen pounded the table in support. Mr. MacPherson waited for the noise to die down before he continued. "But I'm afraid you'll find us rather boring. We spend much of our time going over the town's accounts." He directed another thin smile, clearly dismissive, at the Berings. "If what you really want to know are the issues we face as a community or our plans for the future, I'll be more than happy to meet with you privately to discuss them."

"If you don't mind, we'll stay for the meeting," Mr. Bering said blandly, locating an empty chair and settling snugly against its back. "I'm always interested in hearing the details."

The corner of Helena's mouth twitched upward, but if Mr. MacPherson was displeased with the Berings' decision to stay he gave no sign of it, dragging forward another chair for Myka and apologizing for the lack of suitable refreshments. Having successfully seen to the Berings, Helena took her leave, much to the disappointment of the councilmen, many of whom chorused that she would be seeing them later at the Spur. "Adding to my night's profit," she teased. She nodded coolly to Mr. MacPherson on her way out, and Myka found herself hoping that Helena might hesitate in the doorway and look back in her direction, but the decisive stride didn't falter.

The council did spend much of its meeting on the town's accounts, calling in the town's bookkeeper (who just so happened to be Mr. MacPherson's secretary). As he ran his finger down the columns of the ledger, droning about income from various taxes and fees and expenses related to various charges and wages, Mr. Bering's head rolled to the side of his chair and he snored, snorted himself awake, and then repeated the process. Since at least one councilman's head was drooping toward his chest, Myka hoped that the council wouldn't hold her father's inattention against him. Every once in awhile she would look away from the bookkeeper and his mole, only to encounter the incipient smirk on Mr. MacPherson's face as he watched her father sleep. She wouldn't have been surprised if Mr. MacPherson was letting the bookkeeper run on to discourage them from attending future meetings. Surely no one, not even the most diligent and dedicated of the councilmen, could care whether last month's accounts were off by a penny.

Finally a councilman roused himself to thank the bookkeeper for his time and then turned to Mr. MacPherson. "James, we keep hearing rumors about a new branch line running through Halliday. What have you heard about it?"

The smirk faded, and Mr. MacPherson's eyes drew down at the corners as if he were trying not to see something unpleasant. Like the question just asked, Myka thought. Summoning a knowing smile and spreading it among the councilmen, letting them in on a secret they should already know, Mr. MacPherson chided, "They're just rumors. There's no more truth to them now than there was last year. As far as I know, a branch line will continue to run through Sweetwater."

Another councilman said through a cloud of cigar smoke, "Well, Charlie Graves was in Bismarck last week, and he told me there was a lot of talk of it. Taking the railroad away from Sweetwater would be the death of this town."

Mr. MacPherson shrugged and spread his palms wide to suggest his helplessness before the wild talk of men like Charlie Graves. "I repeat, gentlemen, there will be no new branch line through Halliday."

The councilmen cast uneasy looks, but first one and then more began to guffaw and remind each other that Charlie Graves could never be trusted to tell a story straight. They settled back in their chairs; one of the decanters was passed around, and for a few minutes the room was silent as the men puffed on their cigars and sipped their drinks and took comfort in the knowledge that their ship of state was still riding high on its prairie sea. Clearing his throat, Mr. MacPherson introduced the remaining items of the council's business, the approval of the previous meeting's minutes and a proposal to increase the vice tax levied on the Rusty Spur.

"That won't please Mrs. Wells," a councilman noted.

"Mrs. Wells's displeasure is not our concern," Mr. MacPherson said crisply. "Too much of Sheriff Lattimer's time and, thus, this town's money is spent breaking up fights at the Spur. She should bear her responsibility for the cost."

The councilmen once more exchanged uneasy glances, but there were no further objections, and the meeting ended with an increase to the vice tax of 3%. The men departed with a few gruff farewells to the Berings and a more enthusiastic purloining of cigars. Mr. MacPherson broke off a whispered conversation with his secretary to intercept the Berings. "You should feel free to attend any of the council's meetings in the future, although I can't promise they'll be any more interesting than this one." He picked at an invisible piece of fluff on the sleeve of his coat. "Of course, I would be happy to continue the arrangement the council had with your predecessor, Mr. Sanderson. After the minutes are finalized and approved, I'll send a man over with a copy to the _Journal_."

"I'll give some thought to that, but for the time being, I'll plan on attending the meetings," Mr. Bering said affably, but his point was plain.

Mr. MacPherson's answering smile didn't reach his eyes. "We'll look forward to seeing you." It looked none the warmer when he turned it toward Myka. She felt like rubbing her arms as she and her father went down the short hallway and re-entered the reception room, and she could have sworn that she felt a cold draft emanating from Mr. MacPherson's offices even once they were outside.

On their return to the _Journal_, Myka asked, "What do you think of Mr. MacPherson?"

Mr. Bering stopped, blinking against the late afternoon sun. "I trust him about as far as I can throw him." He tugged a handkerchief from a trouser pocket and mopped the perspiration from his face.

"I'm not sure he was telling the truth about the railroad line," Myka said, recalling the irritation Mr. MacPherson couldn't completely hide when the subject was raised. "Or not the whole truth. He seemed dismissive of what the other council members were saying."

"Maybe," her father said. "But he doesn't strike me as a man with much patience or tolerance for opinions the opposite of his, either." He stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket. "I think I'll try to collar some of the council men when they're alone, see if they have something different to say when he's not around."

"You could ask Mrs. Wells what she knows," Myka suggested. Even if Helena wasn't a member of the council, she owned the largest clearinghouse for gossip in the town, the Rusty Spur, and, from the way they joked with her before the meeting, it sounded like a number of the councilmen were regular customers.

Mr. Bering tilted his head in consideration before wagging it from side to side. "I imagine she thinks she knows quite a bit." He missed the wry smile of acknowledgment that crossed his daughter's face. "But she's not privy to the kind of information I'm looking for, the goings-on with the politicians and the other high mucky-mucks. No, I'll try the other councilmen over the next week or two." In an awkwardly affectionate gesture, he shook Myka's shoulder. "In the meantime, we need to get home so you can get supper on the table."

Myka wanted to believe that the father she remembered, not the tired, sweating man in front of her, anxious for nothing more than a meal and several stiff drinks, would have been open to approaching Helena, but though she had memories of him sharing his day with her mother, she couldn't recall him asking her mother's opinion. Nor could Myka remember Jeannie Bering volunteering one. Her mother had been a quiet woman, from her appearance, which, while attractive, blended into her surroundings, to her voice, which had been soft and trailing. But even if Myka's father had always held the traditional view of a woman's role, the old Warren Bering would have no sooner left the council meeting than he would have been tracking down the other members and hounding them with questions, not satisfied to leave Mr. MacPherson speaking for all. He certainly wouldn't have been standing on the walk, putting his hand to his back as if he were feeling for an ache and looking forward to one of Myka's meals.

Mr. Bering ate his supper and then a piece of apple pie, its filling so thick and pasty that Myka, ruefully evaluating her latest effort at baking, thought they might be able to use it to caulk the windows for winter. He sat in his chair afterward, filling his pipe but restlessly tapping his feet. After several looks at his pocket watch, he announced that he was going out, and Myka knew he would be heading toward the Rusty Spur. She cleaned their dishes and picked up her sewing, intending to mend a hem in one of her father's pairs of trousers, but she felt a sudden burst of restlessness herself, and without examining too closely what it was she was doing, she washed her face and hands and scowled at her hair in the mirror before closing the door behind her. It was twilight, with few people on the street and most of them on their way home. She had never visited Helena this late, but then this wasn't a social call, not exactly.

As Myka opened the gate, she was reassured by the light shining from the library's windows. Leena answered her knock with the same warm smile that she always greeted Myka with and led her to the library. "Mrs. Wells is on her way out, but I'm sure she won't mind your borrowing some books. I think you know her library almost as well as she does."

Myka looked at the bookshelves longingly but said, with a minute shake of her head, "If this isn't a good time, I can come back, but I need to speak with her."

Leena's smile faded, although she spoke even more gently. "Mrs. Wells likes to personally keep an eye on things at the saloon when all the cowhands come to town, but I'm sure she'll spare some time for you." She paused as Myka unconsciously began to toe the dusty tip of her shoe into the deep pile of the rug. "Would you like to sit down, Miss Bering? May I bring you anything?"

With another tiny shake of her head, Myka sat on the edge of a chair, her eyes fixed on the entrance to the library. She heard the soft clatter of Leena going upstairs and then, moments later, the quick, firm steps that heralded Helena's appearance. Seeing her in the shadow cast by the doorway, Myka wondered why Helena was dressed in mourning until she came farther into the room and what had looked black turned the darkest violet. The silk of her dress rippled in the glow of the lamps, suggesting in its sheen the color of water at night, and poised above it, like the moon risen on its arc, was the pale perfection of Helena's face. The sound of her own breathing rasping in her ears, Myka forgot why she was sitting in Helena's library, thinking only that she had never seen anything so beautiful.

"If you're here to tell me about the outcome of the meeting," Helena said with an exaggerated sigh, "I already know about the increase in my taxes, from three different councilmen, no less."

Dazedly, Myka said, "No, it's not that. It's about the railroad line to Halliday."

Helena looked sharply at Myka. "What was said about it?"

"Nothing, no, obviously that's not true," Myka said, flustered, distracted by how the dress fanned onto the floor and then swirled around Helena's legs in synchronous movement with her, as though Helena didn't so much wear it as it clung to her of its own volition. Myka tried to marshal her thoughts, but her mouth was dry and she couldn't take her eyes away from Helena. Her hair was sleekly swept up into a chignon and diamonds sparkled at her ears; if only the princesses in the knightly romances that Myka had devoured as a child had resembled her, she might have paid them more attention. "The council was concerned about rumors of a new railroad line, but Mr. MacPherson said the rumors weren't true." Inwardly Myka groaned at her words. Helena must think she was an idiot for rushing to her about a rumor that was no sooner mentioned than squelched. "But I didn't believe him," she said flatly.

"Why not?" Helena asked, her gaze intent and utterly devoid of the amusement Myka had expected.

"Because he didn't want to talk about it," Myka said slowly. "I think Mr. MacPherson is a man who likes to impress others with what he knows."

Helena snorted; it was a very ladylike snort but still a snort. "You've read him well. James MacPherson is a small cog who yearns to be a very big cog." Rounding Myka's chair, Helena went to her desk and took pencil and paper from a drawer. "Here, let me show you the nasty little mess that our Mr. MacPherson has created."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Myka leaned over Helena's shoulder as she sketched lines on the paper with a draftman's precision. Standing so close, Myka could smell Helena's perfume, a dark scent sharp with spice, like cloves or nutmeg, like Helena herself. She could see the tendrils of hair that had escaped the coil at Helena's neck and she held her hands behind her back so she wouldn't be tempted to touch them.

". . . and here," Helena was saying, "is Halliday."

Myka blinked, dragging her eyes from Helena's neck to the piece of paper Helena was filling with bold, strong lines. Like her signature, Myka almost dreamily recalled. In her mind, she traced the confident slant of the "H" and the flourish of the "W"—

"I'm sorry," she said. "What did you ask me?"

"Why your father isn't here with you. This would be of interest to him, too."

Myka debated which was the least damaging admission, that her father was drinking at the Spur or that he didn't believe Helena would be able to tell him anything of value. "He plans to talk to some of the other council members to find out what they know," she said, hoping that she had successfully sidestepped the question.

"He'll find the other members useless. They're MacPherson's toadies," Helena said waspishly. Then her eyes narrowed suspiciously at Myka. "He doesn't think I know anything." With a disgruntled harrumph that made Myka smile, Helena refocused on her map. "There are three ranches between Sweetwater and Halliday," she said, rapidly drawing boundary lines. "Walter Sykes' Lazy S, MacPherson's Circle M, and" she pointed with her pencil to an oblong shape that cut across the paper at an angle, "Claudia Donovan's Double D." She drew lines representing railroad tracks at the top of the page and the bottom of the page. "A main railroad line runs north of Sweetwater and Halliday, and another runs south. The branch line through Sweetwater connects them. If you wanted to move the line to Halliday –"

"You'd have to go through the Donovans' land," Myka finished for her. Frowning, she leaned closer to Helena, pointing first at Sweetwater and then at Halliday on the map. Helena's perfume was stronger, headier this close, making Myka dizzy. Without thinking, she placed her other hand on Helena's shoulder to balance herself; she could feel the bone of Helena's shoulder, small and fragile under her fingers. Helena showed no discomfort with the familiarity, and Myka fought the impulse to leave her hand where it was. Instead she moved away, putting both hands on the desk, and craned in from the corner. "I don't understand the advantage of moving the branch line to Halliday. It's closer to the main line to the north, but Sweetwater is closer to the one to the south."

"People think railroads were built to transport freight. They were built to make a few men very, very rich," Helena said dryly. "The only reason for moving the line to Halliday is to make someone money. Oftentimes investors in the railroad also own the land, and if they own the land the railroad needs to run through, they can make the railroad pay a high price."

"Like MacPherson," Myka said, Helena's sketch of the area around Sweetwater acquiring more import the longer she studied it.

"Like MacPherson," Helena grimly agreed. "He and his cronies own the land to the north of the Donovan ranch, but he needs the land here," she circled part of the Donovan ranch, "to complete the deal."

"So that's why he doesn't want to discuss the line to Halliday and why he's telling the council it's all just rumors. He wants to buy the land as cheaply as possible from the Donovans," Myka said thoughtfully. "Do the Donovans know about the branch line? Do they want to sell?"

"He's been trying to get Claudia or, rather, her guardian to sell him the ranch ever since I've been here." An affectionate smile crossed her face. "But Claudia has no interest in money, which separates her from the vast majority of us."

"You know her then?"

"She's one of my favorite people in Sweetwater," Helena replied, relaxing deeper into the chair, her body angled so that if she extended her foot, it would slide against Myka's.

Noticing how close Helena's expensively shod foot was to her own shoe, Myka swallowed the nervous bubble in her throat and said with a teasing confidence she didn't at all feel, "So why doesn't a 'powerful business interest in her own right' have a parcel of land she's waiting to sell to the railroad?"

Helena laughed in recognition of her own words to Myka on the day they had met. "I do own land around here, but it's not worth much. A poor investment, most would say. It's cut up with ravines and gullies, horrible for grazing, and almost a day's ride from Sweetwater, but that's precisely why I like it. I keep a few horses out there –." She abruptly cut herself off. "But we were talking about MacPherson and his plans for Halliday."

Myka added 'Helena's ranch' to the fast-growing list of subjects that Helena didn't care to discuss, almost all having to do with who she was and why she was in Sweetwater. The spirit of adventure Helena had also referred to the first day they met could have taken her anywhere. Why here? And how did she know so much about the activities of one James MacPherson? But she was quiet as the dark head came to rest against the side of the chair, and Helena abstractedly stared at the desk. "My . . . friends. . . have told me that MacPherson's backers are getting nervous. They expected the deal to be completed long ago, and there are other uses for their money."

"But if Miss Donovan won't sell, the deal is dead."

"Then he'll have to persuade her to sell, won't he?" Helena suddenly pushed herself from her chair, coming to stand at the window behind the desk. She lifted the curtain, looking out into the night. Myka sensed her unease and, beyond that, an apprehension she wouldn't have normally associated with Helena. "There's only so much he can do within the bounds of the law," Myka reminded her.

Helena let the curtain fall back into place. "Despite the fact that he's an attorney, I don't believe he has much respect for the law. He's ambitious above all else, and while failure would cost him money, it's the humiliation he wouldn't be able to bear."

Myka found herself rubbing her arms, just as she had upon leaving Mr. MacPherson's office. "How far do you think he'll go?"

"I don't know," Helena said. "Eighteen months ago, Claudia's brother was murdered." Myka's head shot up, her eyes wide. Helena held up a hand to forestall her alarm. "It looked like he was trying to stop some cattle rustlers. Rustling's endemic here, and there have been past shootings. . . ."

"But," Myka prompted her.

"But his death has left the ranch in the hands of a 19 year old girl. An unusual 19 year old girl, mind you. But until she turns 25, the ranch is in trust, and she's dependent on the integrity of the trustee. It's always seemed convenient timing to me, Joshua's death and the ranch going into trust and all the while MacPherson is sniffing around the land." Helena smiled a crooked smile. "He may not be well liked but he's respected, and the town would say it's all in my imagination. Maybe I have given myself over to fancies, but I like to think I have a better understanding of men like MacPherson than the wise citizens of Sweetwater." She gave a sarcastic emphasis to the last words.

She returned to her desk and slipped the map into a drawer. "I'm late for the Spur. Would you care to walk with me?" Although her eyes remained shadowed with concern, her tone was light. "As far as propriety would allow?"

"I think we can make propriety bend a little," Myka answered with a grin.

"But not as far as we should be able to," Helena murmured. She patted the neck of her dress, her brows drawing together as she couldn't find what she was searching for. She went out into the foyer, calling for Leena. "Are you upstairs? Could you –." She stepped back into the library. "I need to go upstairs for a minute, and then we can leave."

"Why the Spur?" Myka asked, not knowing why she was asking the question now. Caution deserted her when she was around Helena, and the barrier between her curiosity and what it was acceptable to ask was eroding. Soon, she thought, she would have no shame at all, and their conversations would become one relentless interrogation.

"You tend to ask the most surprising questions at the most surprising times, Miss Bering," Helena finally observed. After pursing her lips in consideration for a moment, she said, "I'm still trying to decide whether I find it refreshing."

Muttering in self-excoriation as she paced the library floor, Myka nearly ran into Leena as the other woman passed in front of her to turn down the lamp on the desk. "I heard you ask her about the Spur. She'll tell you she bought it because it was a good investment. Don't let her get away with that." Leena's smile was impish but there was an underlying seriousness in her expression that compelled Myka to promise, "I won't."

"Won't what?" Helena asked, sweeping back into the room, exchanging looks with Leena as Leena extinguished the lamp on a side table.

"Let you get away with anything," Leena said with mock severity.

"There's nothing I do that escapes your eagle eye," Helena complained, "or your shrewish tongue."

Leena only laughed, their chiding of each other a habit each clearly loved to indulge. Myka wasn't sure how she would characterize their relationship, but she was fairly certain that mistress of the house and housekeeper was the least part of it. She noted Leena's glance flicking to a locket that was now nestled at the base of Helena's throat, and a sadness settled over Leena's face when she recognized it. The locket was a simple piece of jewelry, the kind of sentimental memento that a young girl might wear, and it seemed all the more plain against the richness of Helena's dress and the gleam of her diamond earrings.

But Leena made no comment and, with a rustling of her skirts, she left them. The quiet that then descended accompanied Helena and Myka on their walk to the Spur. Even from Helena's home, the glow from the Spur was visible and the sound of someone enthusiastically but inexpertly playing the saloon's piano carried on the night air. They crossed the main street to a narrower one that would take them to the back of the Spur, and although Myka had the longer legs, she was almost skipping to keep up with Helena. The setting of the sun had brought no relief from the heat, and Myka wasn't looking forward to another night spent tossing and turning in her airless alcove. She wondered if the bedrooms in Helena's house were cool, and for the space of a few seconds, she imagined Helena's bedroom, all in white, with a large bed that didn't dip in the middle like her own and sheets that felt soft, but not thin, to the touch.

"I bought the Spur because it was a good investment," Helena said abruptly, stopping and turning to look at Myka.

Helena's voice comingling with the image of her bedroom that Myka had just pictured was as evocative as if Myka were seeing Helena undress for bed in front of her, an intimacy so powerful despite its being invented whole cloth that Myka looked away, as embarrassed as if she had been caught actually peeping into Helena's window. "Leena told me you would say that," she said faintly. Trying to regain her composure, Myka said more firmly, "She also told me not to let you get away with it. So, tell me, why the Spur?"

Myka felt more than saw Helena impatiently chop at the air. "A tiresome trait, believing people are better than they are. Leena would like you to think I bought the Spur because I didn't like that the girls were being maltreated." Even though Helena's face was only a greyish glimmer against the darkness, Myka sensed the dark eyes staring intently at her. "It's odd how men don't like to pay for a girl who has bruises and cuts, and even stranger that girls who have been beaten aren't enthusiastic about entertaining clients. I believed the Spur would make more money if the girls didn't fear for their safety."

Myka knew what went on in the rooms of the Spur and places like it, but she had assumed that, like most cash transactions, if it wasn't always pleasant, it was at least quickly and painlessly done. "You mean," she began haltingly.

"There are men who like some slap and tickle or a spanking, and I expect my girls to accommodate them," Helena said coolly. "But others become violent when they want more than they're willing to pay for, and still others who find their pleasure in inflicting pain. Those are the ones I don't tolerate." Her words laced with an angry sarcasm, she said, "No doubt you're thinking I should teach my girls the skills that would obtain them respectable employment. But where are all the grand families in Sweetwater for whom they can cook and clean? Is Mr. Burns at the general store supposed to hire them as clerks? There's nothing wrong with offering services where they are needed, Miss Bering. Sweetwater doesn't need maids or seamstresses, but it obviously needs whores."

Helena hadn't raised her voice, but the words reverberated against the silent buildings around them. Myka recognized one as Sweetwater's bank, another as the saddle and harness-maker's shop, managed by respectable men, who regularly attended Sweetwater's church and, chances were, as regularly climbed the stairs to the Spur's second floor. Just as her father would, Myka thought, if he hadn't already found his comfort in a bottle. Weariness dulling the sarcasm, Helena said, "While Jesus went among the lepers, the good Christian women of Sweetwater lift their skirts and cross the street to avoid contact with one of my girls." This close to the saloon, the piano's discordant music was louder but merrier, a woman's teasing "Keep your hands where I can see them, Bert!" rising above the notes. "I'm sorry," Helena said quietly. "You asked a question, and in response I gave you a tirade."

Myka was used to hearing much stronger invective and more personally aimed, but she wasn't going to tell Helena that. Instead she said dryly, "Clearly, emotion played no role in your investment in the Rusty Spur."

She feared Helena had taken offense at the remark until a rueful chuckle reassured her. "Touché, Miss Bering." They walked in silence until they reached the back entrance to the Spur. Silhouetted in the doorway, Helena hesitated. "Tomorrow I'm planning to visit Claudia Donovan. Would you like to come with me?" She hastily added, "And your father as well, of course. It might help to put this business of a branch line to Halliday in perspective."

"Yes," Myka said, a touch too readily. Trying for a more measured response, she explained, "If Miss Donovan is all that stands between MacPherson and his making a fortune, my father and I ought to meet her." Spending the day in Helena's company was justified if it furthered the work of the _Journal_, Myka rationalized, although exactly how it benefited the newspaper was eluding her at the moment.

"Good. We'll leave bright and early in the morning. It's a long ride out there."

Myka waited for her father to come home from the Spur. As of late, he wasn't so intoxicated that she couldn't maintain some sort of conversation with him. She thought he would be agreeable to going out to the Donovan ranch; he was interested in meeting Sweetwater's residents, even if the town limits had to be generously expanded to include the more far-flung families. She also knew that he harbored a romantic fascination with life on the range, having admitted more than once that, as a boy, he had dreamed of being a scout and explorer, like Kit Carson or Jim Bridger. Granted, herding cows was a step down from blazing trails through the wilderness and living with Indians, but Myka suspected her father would be hard-pressed to disguise an eagerness to tag along after the Donovan hands. He would also be more receptive, she hoped, to listening to what Helena would have to say about the railroad line to Halliday.

She finished repairing the hem of his pants and read far into Mrs. Gaskell's _North and South_ but had yet to hear the sound of her father's footsteps. She could gauge by how slow and dragging they were how much he had had to drink. It was when she heard the knock at the door to the _Journal_, polite but insistent, that she knew her father would be in no condition to make the trip to the Donovan ranch the next morning. She opened the door, expecting to see some burly stranger from the Spur holding her father upright, but instead it was Pete.

Greeting her as if he were simply stopping by for a visit, he asked Myka where he should lay Mr. Bering down. She motioned to the bedroom and watched as Pete rolled her father gently onto the bed and then eased his boots off. "He'll be all right after he sleeps it off," Pete said, his expression both sad and knowing. "He said something to me about it being your mother's birthday."

Her father hadn't been too drunk not to offer an excuse. When Myka was much younger and Mr. Bering's drinking not yet a chronic event, he would stagger home, explaining away his inebriation on the fact that it was the anniversary of Jeannie Bering's death or their wedding day or some other occasion that was sure to tug at Myka's heartstrings. The excuses had stopped as the drinking continued, but he still trotted them out, especially if he was being escorted home – or to the jail – by the sheriff. "My mother's birthday is in March, Sheriff Lattimer," Myka said.

"Oh," Pete said, his face becoming even sadder as he looked down at Mr. Bering, who had turned on his side, cradling a pillow. "Don't give up, Miss Bering. Sweetwater may turn him around, it did me." At her inquiring gaze, he said, "It's a long story. For now, it's enough to know that I was at the end of my rope when I heard the town was looking for a new lawman. I came here, and I stopped drinking. You can't lose hope." A delighted grin split his face. "Hey, 'at the end of my rope,' 'can't lose hope,' I'm a poet. Well, not much of one," he amended. "But I've got a good feeling about you, Miss Bering. A really good feeling. You're going to find something wonderful here, trust me."

Myka leaned against the door after Pete left, trying to hold onto the optimism that had shone, however briefly, while he was in the room. He would want her to concentrate on all the positive things about her father since they had moved to Sweetwater, Mr. Bering's renewed enthusiasm for his work, his improved mood, and not the step backward he had taken tonight. It was unfamiliar, hope, but, Myka reflected, she had been experiencing many unfamiliar emotions since she and her father had come to Sweetwater, many of them associated with their new employer. Unconsciously she straightened her shoulders as she pushed herself away from the door, prepared to take on her own fluttering heart.

#

Myka had wrestled through the night with whether she ought to go with Helena to the Donovan ranch or stay home and look after her father. She had rarely had a choice before and being presented with an alternative to quietly completing her chores while her father slept and then literally tiptoeing around him when he was awake made her realize how much his drinking was a constraint upon her. As they had moved from town to town, the rented rooms successively smaller and drearier, it seemed that the circuit she walked around him had grown smaller as well until she could almost believe that her shoes were tapping in a circle on the bald dome of his head. He couldn't inhale a breath that she didn't exhale.

He wouldn't want to eat and he would complain that the smell of cooking made him nauseous. He would hang his head in his hands and yell at the least sound she made. Following one of his heavy bouts of drinking, there was nothing that looking after him did except make them both the more miserable. There was every reason to go with Helena and none to stay, except to silence the self-accusations that would begin as soon as she and Helena left, that she wasn't a good daughter, that her place was with her father. Today, she decided, she would risk the reproaches, real or imagined. She had gotten up before sunrise, setting out something for her father in the event he would want to eat. She had cleaned the rooms as best she could in the half-light and draped his mended pants over a chair. Now she was squatting in front of the printing press, trying to identify what gear or lever, what thingamabob, was wearing out, breaking down, because the press was grinding too hard as it churned out the paper.

She didn't hear Helena's knock at the door, and she didn't know until she stood up and stepped back and felt Helena's hands on her elbows, steadying the both of them, that Helena had entered the _Journal_'s office. "Mrs. Wells," Myka gasped, "I'm sorry, I didn't know you were here." Helena removed her hands and Myka stepped away, flustered, uncertain whether to attribute it to Helena's early arrival or to their momentary collision. There had been nothing intimate in the brief contact of their bodies, but she had registered both Helena's softness against her back and that, in grabbing her arms, Helena had held her for a heartbeat or two longer than necessary.

But if Helena recognized that she had held onto Myka for longer than polite assistance required, she gave no sign of it, her attention fixed on the press. "I'm the one who should apologize," she said as she knelt, peering into the recesses of the machine. "I didn't exactly announce my presence." She leaned back and looked up at Myka. "Are you having problems with Bessie?"

"Bessie?" Myka echoed.

"That's what Mr. Sanderson called it. I acquired them both when I bought the _Journal_." She flashed Myka a mischievous grin. "I did sense a certain spousal devotion to her on his part. He didn't like anyone else to touch her."

"Maybe she's missing him," Myka suggested, "because it's been harder and harder to get the paper through. My father needs to take a look at her."

"I can do that," Helena said promptly, rolling up the sleeves of her dress.

"Mrs. Wells, you don't have to, I mean, my father is more than able," Myka's voice trailed off as Helena turned back to the press and reached deep within it. "You'll ruin your dress," she protested weakly, glancing at the bedroom door. After a hard night of drinking, Mr. Bering usually slept until noon, but sometimes the slightest sound would raise him from his stupor and he would lunge into the kitchen or parlor, raging at whatever or whoever was nearest. If that happened this morning, Myka could only hope that her father would still be wearing his pants.

"No matter," Helena said cheerfully over an eruption of clanking from the press. "I threw on this old rag from the closet because visiting Claudia, well, let's just say, the visits are always interesting."

Rag. Helena's blue dress was older and less expensive than the other dresses Myka had seen her wear, but it was still nicer than anything Myka owned. She stifled a sigh and knelt next to Helena, watching her deftly move various parts of the printing press. "Like any woman worth having," Helena said, grunting with effort as she tugged at a piece of metal, "Bessie needs a little wooing before she surrenders. . . her heart, that is." Helena clarified, after a quick look at Myka. The piece came free and Helena examined it before shrugging and replacing it. "That's not the problem," she muttered.

Forty-five minutes later, much of Bessie was on the floor next to them, and though they were no nearer to identifying the problem than when Helena had arrived, she was humming to herself, ink on her hands and smudges on her face. Myka had made coffee, which Helena reluctantly accepted, there being no tea available in the Bering household, and Mr. Bering had slept through the clanging as Helena stripped the press, crooning to the machine as she worked. Myka had acted as her assistant, placing the parts on the floor as Helena had given them to her and venturing out to the carriage at Helena's command and bringing back tools from a box stored beneath the seat. The high polish on the leather gleamed in the sunlight, and the two horses in harness, sleek and well fed, eyed her with no alarm as she climbed in and out, apparently used to their mistress's vagaries. ("One shouldn't visit Claudia Donovan without a full set of machinist's tools" was all that Helena had said in explanation as Myka handed her a wrench.)

On her back, looking up through the press, Helena said silkily, "Come, love, we're both women trying to make the best of things under difficult circumstances. Tell me what's wrong, and I promise to make it better." Bessie remained uncooperative as Helena loosened a bolt. It fell free, striking Helena on her cheek before dropping to the floor.

"Bol –" she started to hiss, then stopped, rubbing her cheek and glaring at the press.

"Perhaps," Myka observed, "she needs Mr. Sanderson's touch."

Helena gave her an arch look. "I have a very sure hand."

Not entirely certain she knew what Helena was alluding to, Myka thought she could make a pretty good guess, although it was Helena who blushed first. Clearing her throat, Helena said, "Sometimes I forget I'm not in a saloon. My apologies if I've given offense."

"None taken," Myka said breezily, enjoying that it was Helena this time who was embarrassed. As Helena attacked the press with fervor, Myka asked, above the sounds of squeaking wood, "Where did you learn to do this?"

Sitting up, Helena paused, looking at the tools and parts surrounding them. "You mean dismantling machinery to no effect?" she demanded in self-disgust.

"Mmmm. . . I would call it conducting a thorough investigation of the problem," Myka countered.

Helena smiled. "Your confidence in me will be rewarded." She took a long, weary look at Bessie. "Eventually." She idly revolved a small part between her fingers. "To answer your question, my grandfather would sometimes take me with him when he toured his factories.

"Factories?"

"Textiles." Helena said, putting the part down and scooting closer to the press once more. "My father and brother like to pretend we're not from trade, but my grandfather wasn't ashamed. He loved nothing more than to take apart a machine and put it back together,"she fondly recalled. "He and I would spend hours together working out improvements. He even had some of mine implemented." There was an echo of a child's pride in the words.

"He must have loved you very much," Myka said cautiously, expecting Helena to change the subject at any moment.

"He did, and I adored him." Helena rose to her feet and walked around the press. "I was twelve when he died. His name was Christian, and Christina was named after him." She walked the other way around and stopped. She sharply drew in a breath and gave the press a shove. Myka stared at her in disbelief, but after a few seconds, something seemed to clatter into place. Helena grinned, giving Bessie a pat. "Ah, a lass who wanted a bit of rough wooing."

Myka collected the tools as Helena restored Bessie to working order, betraying no indecision as she fit parts together. Assessing the state of her hands with dismay once the last piece of Bessie was put where it belonged, Helena murmured her thanks as Myka brought her a basin of water and a towel. After a vigorous scrub, most of the stains and streaks were gone, with Myka helpfully pointing out the areas on Helena's face that needed a pass with the towel. Helena shrugged at the few stubborn stains that remained on her hands, but Myka held up a finger and went to search the desk, wincing as empty whiskey bottles rolled into each other as she pulled drawers open. Finding a small jar, she took it over to Helena.

"My father swears by this, and it does seem to get the worst of it out."

Helena scooped out a teaspoon-sized amount of what had the look and feel of ointment but lacked its astringent smell. She worked it into her hands and nodded with satisfaction as it removed the ink. "Do you know its composition?"

Myka shook her head. "You'll have to ask my father." Reflexively she looked toward his bedroom, grateful that he had slept through the minor demolition that had occurred only a few feet away. "He says it's an old printer's secret." As if acting from a similarly ingrained habit, she took Helena's hands and inspected them. "The nail beds are always the hardest." She scooped out more of the compound and worked it into the base of Helena's nails, frowning in concentration.

Even stained and nicked from some of Bessie's sharper pieces, Helena's hands commanded Myka's admiration. Her fingers were long and slender, her skin unmarred by the faint discolorations of old scars and other imperfections that dotted Myka's own. Myka could feel the bones and tendons move as she turned Helena's hands, their warm pliancy making her think she was holding not hands but birds, small and quiescent, their instinct to flee stilled for the moment. The back and forth of her thumbs, a casual motion at first, had slowed, becoming more suggestion than actual touch.

"I'm not the only one with sure hands," Helena said, barely above a whisper. "Gentle, too."

Not yet ready to look up, to meet those eyes, Myka intended her smile to be her only response, but she heard herself say teasingly, "You're not a lass who appreciates a bit of rough wooing?" It was more seductive than playful, and Myka was shocked by the sound of her voice, low and with a timbre that seemed to vibrate within her, as though inside her a bell had been struck. She had never sounded like that before, not even with Sam.

"I wouldn't say that," Helena said, and if Myka's voice was a bell sounding a call, then Helena's was the smoke and the fire. Her eyes, always before so opaque, thoughts and feelings hidden behind the amused glances, had the transparency of storefront glass, and Myka saw deep within them a longing that matched her own. "Myka," Helena said with raw urgency, transforming the name into a plea that burned a path from Myka's ears to her chest.

The bedroom door opened, and Mr. Bering tottered in the doorway, squinting against the sunlight. "Myka," he growled.

And there, between Helena's saying of her name and her father's, lay all the difference in the world. She felt Helena slipping her hands from hers, and she took a placating step toward Mr. Bering. He was wearing pants, but his undershirt, yellowed from use and age, was unbuttoned and drooped off one shoulder. Having caught sight of Helena, his scowl deepened though he managed to grind out a somewhat civil "Mrs. Wells."

"Dad," Myka began. "Mrs Wells –"

"I'm taking Miss Bering out to the Donovan ranch today," Helena interrupted. "She expressed an interest in meeting Claudia Donovan, and since Miss Donovan owns one of the largest ranches in this part of the territory and is a stout supporter of the _Journal_ as well, I thought I should introduce them." Nervousness made her rush her words, but her tone was businesslike, and she showed no surprise at seeing Warren Bering in wrinkled pants and undershirt. "You're more than welcome to accompany us, but we need to leave soon as I've already put us behind schedule."

Mr. Bering started to shake his head but thought better of it, grimacing with pain. "I don't think I'll be going with you today." Standing taller and trying to shrug his undershirt back into place, he said, "I'd appreciate your asking me the next time you want to take my daughter somewhere, Mrs. Wells. I know I'm your employee, but let me be frank, I don't want Myka seen too much in your company. I'm sure you understand why."

"Perfectly," Helena said neutrally, although she seemed to have grown even paler.

"Dad," Myka said, embarrassed and angry. "I'm a grown woman, capable of—"

He extended his arm, as if to shake his finger at her, but the gesture unbalanced him and he grabbed at the doorframe for support. "As long as you live under my roof –"

"We shouldn't upset your father," Helena interjected, gracing him with a conciliatory smile. "Mr. Bering, I understand your concern, and the next time I have the occasion to invite your daughter somewhere I will seek your permission first."

Mr. Bering grunted in acknowledgment, Helena's words having mollified him, and stumbled backward into the bedroom, closing the door behind him. Avoiding what she assumed was Helena's pitying gaze, Myka walked rapidly toward the _Journal_'s door, flinging it open, and blindly trying to pull herself up and into the carriage. Her foot slipped and she nearly fell into the carriage, saving herself at the last minute by holding onto the edge of the seat. "Myka," Helena said, squeezing Myka's arm. There was no pity in her expression, only concern. "Myka," she repeated.

How did she ever think her father's drinking could remain a secret? Especially from Helena, who owned the damn Spur. He had swayed in the doorway, reeking of alcohol, presuming to lecture Helena about the preciousness of his daughter's reputation. Maybe he had spoken out of some crabbed sense of paternal responsibility, but Myka had heard only the old outrage. Sam had blown into and out of her life so long ago that Myka could almost believe he was a remnant of a bad dream that she mistook for a memory. But she knew that if she put her mind to it, she would be able to remember every one of his lazy smiles, the hours spent together "stargazing" as he had called it. While her father's memories of Sam wouldn't be as numerous or, thankfully, as detailed, they were probably no less painful in their own way. She had been the cause that time, not her father's drinking or his editorials, of their hasty departure from another small town. She could try to explain to Helena that her father had been railing at an old ghost, but she wasn't brave enough to put her and her father in an even worse light, and she suspected that Helena would have little interest in hearing a "girl wronged" story that was no different from a thousand others. Myka stood by the side of the carriage, silent, letting Helena think what she would.

"Myka," Helena said again, patiently. How could a name that sounded so. . . flinty. . .when other people said it, the "ka" hitting Myka's ears like a hammer striking rock, sound so elegant and even pretty when Helena said it? "He's right, you know. I should take more care with your reputation."

Looking around, down, anywhere but at those eyes, Myka said, "Helena, please believe me when I say you can't hurt my reputation any more than my father and I already have. There are things you don't know. . . ."

"About you?" Helen said with gentle amusement. "I'm sure there are, and if you ever wish to tell me them, I shall listen." She helped Myka up to the seat. The horses nickered at the creaking of the carriage and stamped their hooves, their harness jingling. "What I need to know, however, is how your father behaves toward you when he's been drinking. Is he violent? Because if he is, I will remove you from this place today." Helena spoke casually, as if she was talking about moving the Spur's supply of liquor from one storeroom to another, but her face was set, the muscles bunching at her jaw, as she rounded the horses to the other side of the carriage.

"No," Myka said. Sweetwater was beginning to stir. Buckboards carrying families into town were rolling down the street, and the shrill voices of children at play broke the morning silence. "Not toward me. Toward himself, yes. He drinks because he thinks the world has punished him, and then he punishes himself by drinking more."

Sitting down next to Myka, Helena lifted the reins and urged the horses forward. "We all have our ways of punishing ourselves. If we're lucky, we're not also punishing those around us." Gazing out over the horses' bobbing heads, she said, "I fear your father is not a lucky man."

Twenty-eight years old and unmarried – some might say that Myka was her father's punishment. And if that were true, then both Berings were unlucky. But what was luck, in the end? The confidence – Myka sidled a glance toward Helena – or the hope – she thought of Pete – that things would work out the way they should matched with a determination to help them along. Myka knew that she didn't lack for determination; she just needed something, or someone, to pin her newfound hope on.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: After this chapter, next up is Helena and some of her backstory. This is beginning to develop into a full-fledged novella/novel, which I hope you're up for. That's why I've begun to start introducing some new characters. Don't worry, it's always going to be Bering & Wells together at the end.**

Chapter Five

They rode east from Sweetwater, the horses trotting at an easy pace. Although the top of the carriage helped to shelter them from the sun, Helena had put on a hat with a wide brim that shadowed her face. Myka, having forgotten to bring a bonnet with her, sat at an angle, looking away from the sun, and watched the prairie roll toward the horizon, the grass bending in the breeze. Birds skimmed over the grass, searching for food, and behind straggling lines of barbed wire, cattle grazed. Myka was grateful that Helena made no attempts at conversation; the charged moments between them when she had been stroking Helena's hands followed by the mortifying appearance of her father had her in turmoil. Myka liked to picture her mind as an endless series of compartments in which were stored all her thoughts and experiences. Once labeled and filed, they were hers to reexamine or relive at will, their ability to defy order or logic or, more rarely, decency nullified. That wasn't to say that there weren't some events too painful to be catalogued – her mother's death, her relationship with Sam – but they were few, and there was even a special compartment for them labeled "Things Not to Think About." Maybe she needed a new compartment simply labeled "Helena" since none of the existing compartments in her mind were sufficient to contain all of her conflicting, confused emotions about the woman.

She twisted her head, appraising Helena, who sat forward on the seat, occasionally twitching the reins to guide the horses. Helena's profile, what Myka could see of it under the hat, confirmed her earliest impressions. Helena's lips had a natural upward curve, as if that amused smile was only just held in abeyance, and the tilt to her chin suggested a confidence bordering on cockiness. Even though she knew she couldn't withstand another one of Helena's searing looks, Myka wanted to touch her, to cover the hands holding the reins with her own, to tip back Helena's hat and trace the contours of her face, if only to reassure herself that the intensity – she couldn't, didn't want to find the right word to describe what she had felt, knew instinctively that Helena had felt as a result of that incidental caress (it had to have been incidental) in the _Journal_'s office – wouldn't be repeated. She hadn't slept well, slept at all, really, worrying about leaving her father alone, and then there had been the strangely companionable time spent fixing Bessie and listening to Helen whisper in Bessie's ear, if Bessie had ears, as they worked, all of that had infused those moments she had held Helena's hands with an expectancy that she would have never otherwise felt. Unique. Anomalous. All the same, there would be no returning to the relationship they had before; they were "Myka" and "Helena" to each other now, though Myka had yet to call Helena by her name. She could feel each of its three syllables glide over her tongue, and despite hearing the name only in her mind, she felt the same resonance, the same tolling deep within that she had felt when she teased Helena about being wooed, as if her body was calling out to itself.

"Tell me," she said rapidly, "tell me about Claudia Donovan." Anything. The size of her shoes. The color of her hair. It was proving very difficult to keep Helena shut in her Helena compartment. "You said she was unusual. How is she unusual?"

Helena stiffened, as if Myka's request had interrupted her own train of thought. "She's very bright. Inventive." She pointed off to their left. "That's the Sykes' ranch. You'll see what I mean soon enough."

Myka squinted against the sun, spying a cluster of buildings on the top of a small ridge. Some were clearly outbuildings, while another had the lovingly tended air of a home. As the carriage drew closer, she could see wooden ramps extending in various directions from the house and the glint of what looked to be rails snaking toward the outbuildings.

"Walter's legs were crushed in a riding accident several years ago. Claudia built the ramps and the tracks and a special chair to run on them so he can have some independence. The chair itself is a marvel, powered by a small engine. Quite ingenious, really." Helena issued a soft command to the horses and tugged on the reins. The carriage slowed as they passed by the buildings. "Sometimes you can see him out and about in the chair. Had we more time, I'd take you up to the house to meet him."

"He doesn't share Mr. MacPherson's interest in the line to Halliday or the Donovan ranch?" Myka saw that, in back of the house, a flower garden had been planted. Despite the drought that had enveloped this part of the Territory, the garden didn't suffer from a lack of water, the blooms, even from a distance, lush and vibrant. There was no reason to think, simply from the riot of color, that Mr. Sykes had other, less rapacious interests, but Helena was already nodding her head in confirmation.

"Horticulture and bees are his passions. He keeps an apiary on the property. I've never asked where."

"You're afraid of bees?" Myka said, unable not to smile at the thought of the self-possessed Helena wildly swinging her arms at a tiny honeybee.

"I'm not afraid of bees," Helena said defensively. "I have a healthy respect for any insect or animal that can cause pain in complete disproportion to its size."

"Then you would 'respect' a pekinese or terrier as well?"

"Nasty biting beasts," Helena muttered, urging the horses back into a trot.

As the sun climbed higher, the heat became more oppressive, and Myka struggled against sliding into an uneasy doze. Occasionally she sensed Helena turning her head to check on her, and she would right herself against the back of the seat and stare fixedly at the landscape in front of her, which was only more prairie. She thought she heard Helena say indulgently, "Go to sleep, Myka, I'll wake you once we're there." She couldn't name what woke her next, except that, for a brief period of time, though there wasn't a cloud in the sky to obscure it, the sun shone less brightly. Or perhaps it was no more than the tension suddenly rippling from Helena. She was sitting alertly, her mouth compressed in a troubled line. Groggily, her head beginning to throb with an incipient headache, Myka shaded her eyes with her hand and looked for what had caught Helena's attention. The prairie looked the same, silvered with dust. To the north, at the end of a winding lane, was a home much larger than Walter Sykes', sporting a central entrance with a portico and rows of windows on either side. It was the type of home, mansion actually, that Myka associated with the gentry in the novels she read, where the landed classes were attended to by an army of servants and everyone rode to hounds. All the signs of the toil that supported such a residence, the ranch's barns, corrals, and bunkhouses, were at a far remove.

"This must be the MacPherson ranch," Myka said.

"Functionally, yes, though I'm sure he would prefer a description more befitting its pharaonic splendor," Helena said sardonically.

"What do they call it around here?"

"His folly, his madness, what else? But even those who whisper about it behind his back are impressed by it." Helena took a last look at the mansion over her shoulder, and Myka followed suit, unable to shake the impression that the glinting of the windows in the sunlight was, in fact, a cascade of mocking winks at their backs.

The prairie continued to roll beneath their wheels, the horses pulling the carriage over every bump and prairie dog mound, or so it felt to Myka as she and Helena were jolted and jounced. She searched for anything that would break the seamless meeting of grass and sky, each barely distinguishable from the other as the sun neared its zenith, transforming the blue of the one and the drought-brown of the other into a glaring, blinding white. Even Helena, who had been impervious to the heat, began to wilt, freeing one hand to unbutton the neck of her dress. As the fabric curled away from her skin, Myka saw the thin gold links of a necklace and realized that Helena's wearing of the locket last night wasn't an afterthought, that she always wore it. 'Close to her heart' was the phrase that immediately came to mind, and Myka was struck again by the sentimentality, which seemed so unlike the Helena she knew. She recalled Leena's sadness when she recognized the locket, and Myka wondered about the locket's story, the lost love who had meant so much to Helena that she carried a part of him with her. For the first time, Myka felt a surge of annoyance at her own unflagging curiosity; she wasn't sure she wanted to know about the person who had so irrevocably captured Helena's heart.

"How close are we to the Donovan ranch?" Myka asked with an irritability that had nothing to do with the heat or the length of time they had been traveling and everything to do with the direction of her thoughts. But Helena wouldn't know that, and Myka knew she sounded exactly like a fussy child.

"We've been on Donovan land for quite awhile now," Helena said mildly. "We'll start seeing evidence of Claudia at work very soon."

Myka didn't have long to puzzle over what Helena meant by that. Boxes of varying sizes, covered with different substances and materials, began to appear here and there on the prairie. Farther on there was a large circular patch of scorched earth and, in the middle of it, a chute tilted at a 45 degree angle. "A launching pad," Helena explained, unprompted. "But it's not been safe to fire any rockets because of the drought."

"Rockets?" Myka repeated in disbelief.

"Perhaps missiles is a better word. Missiles aspiring to be rockets. She hopes to fly to the moon someday."

"Miss Donovan wants to fly a rocket to the moon?" Myka said with the same note of disbelief.

"Among other things," Helena said, smiling with an almost parental pride. "She's convinced that we should be able to harness energy from the sun, thus the 'energy cells' that you see around us."

"And has she been successful?"

"Not yet. That's why there are so many of them."

Myka squinted against the glare of a metal hull baking in the sun. Listing to the side, it resembled the photographs Myka had seen of a whale beached on the sand. A tiny cabin, more like a turret, protruded from the hull, as if the hull, in imitation of the whale it resembled, had spawned another structure, and from it extended a length of pipe with a bulbous lens at its end. "Is that a submarine?" She asked, her voice dropping.

"Sank during her maiden voyage on Jackrabbit Creek," Helena said with mock solemnity. "All hands, that is, Claudia and I, escaped without incident."

The horses, as though aware they were approaching their destination, increased their pace, and Myka clung to the seat as the carriage bounced between slabs of rock set in the ground ("an ongoing experiment on the weathering rates of different minerals"), more energy cells, and a few windmills (''Claudia is also interested in wind power"). The rutted track they were following widened and smoothed, and soon they were passing under a metal arch with the "Double D" etched in curving script at the top and approaching a sprawling house with a verandah, an enticingly shaded verandah Myka noted, with a glider and rocking chairs and a red-haired girl who leaped from the top step and ran to greet them.

"Finally!' She declared, rising up and down on the balls of her feet. She was wearing overalls over a checked shirt, although the overalls seemed to be made out of a stiffer fabric than denim and they shone in the sun as though they had been oiled. Her auburn hair was cut short, only just brushing the collar of her shirt. She helped Myka down or, more accurately, in an excess of enthusiasm, pulled her from the seat. "You must be Myka. Helena said she was going to bring you out here." Myka couldn't take offense at an appraisal so naked and so guileless, but she also couldn't help feeling like a Donovan steer singled out for market. "I'm Claudia. No 'Miss Bering' or 'Miss Donovan.' I don't stand on ceremony here. Artie would say I don't stand on manners or good taste either, but that's just him." Her smile was friendly, but her eyes were wary, noticeably warming only when Helena joined them. Claudia wrapped her in a one-armed hug, motioning toward Myka with her other hand. "You've brought me a new victim." She theatrically coughed. "Ahem, a new assistant. Jinxsy will be so relieved."

"Claudia," a man said sternly from the verandah. His face was scrunched in irritation, although Myka couldn't tell whether it was directed at Claudia or expressive of a general irritation at having guests since the glances he sent her and Helena from beneath bushy brows were hardly welcoming.

"Keep your chaps on, buckaroo. I'll wait until after lunch to drag them to my laboratory," Claudia said, affecting a wince-worthy British accent as she pronounced 'laboratory.' She squeezed

Helena closer to her. "Please tell me you brought some of Leena's cookies with you. Artie's been cranky all morning."

"He seems so much more pleasant now," Helena said under her breath, eliciting a yelp of laughter from Claudia. "Cookies are in the carriage." She unwound herself from Claudia and returned to the carriage to lift a basket from behind the seat.

Artie had left the verandah and was nearing Myka when Claudia emitted a piercing whistle between her thumb and forefinger. He stopped, clapping his hands to his ears. "Will you stop that?" he demanded. As if the noise had disarranged his appearance, he reset his spectacles and smoothed his goatee before introducing himself to Myka. "Arthur Nielsen, Claudia's guardian."

"Jailer," Claudia countered as a Donovan hand appeared at her side, as if her whistle had magically summoned him. He nimbly climbed onto the carriage's seat and, at his twitching of the reins, the horses eagerly trotted toward a large barn behind the house.

"Someone has to keep you from destroying this ranch by fire, flood, or whatever godawful invention you dream of next," Artie shot back, but he said it without rancor, and Myka suspected that the misanthropic thrust of his eyebrows and the jaundiced looks cast at her and Helena were automatic and without real significance, a carapace that protected something more vulnerable within.

"We expected you some time ago," he grumbled at Myka as he led her to the verandah. "Hours of 'Where is she?' and 'Helena should have been here by now.' A frustrated Claudia is a dangerous Claudia. She almost blew up the kitchen while she was waiting for you."

Or maybe all that was under Artie's carapace was more disagreeableness. Myka bit back a sigh and almost missed the challenge in his eyes. Artie might be a grump and a complainer, but he was also testing her. A shrinking violet wouldn't fare well in the brusque give and take of the Donovan household. "Mrs. Wells brought her toolbox. We came prepared," she said dryly.

Something approaching a smile touched Artie's lips, although he sounded no less curmudgeonly when he said, "You better hope she threw some armor into the carriage, too."

Inside the house it was pleasantly and, inexplicably, cool. Myka looked up at the ceiling and then at the walls, trying to determine the source. The room was dark, curtains drawn across the windows, but that wouldn't in and of itself explain the sharp drop in temperature. Claudia, still Helena's shadow, craned her head around the latter's shoulders and, seeing Myka's puzzled expression, said, "Something I've been toying with, how to cool a house during the summer. I've piped in water –"

"Claudia," Artie groaned, "can you please explain all this later? Marta's been holding lunch. . . ."

"All right, all right," Claudia said, exasperated. "No talk of cooling systems or propulsion systems or anything that might interfere with your appetite." With false innocence, she added, "I suppose you also don't want me to talk about how you almost lost your hand this morning touching something on the stove I told you not to touch."

Artie pushed up his spectacles and pinched his nose. "You had a container on the stove that shouldn't have been there. I thought it prudent." His voice grew louder. "I thought it prudent to remove it seeing as how last month you left something on the stove that exploded and took out two windows."

"But this time it was supposed to be there," Claudia protested, pleading her case before Helena, whose eyes were crinkling with amusement. "I've been working on a self-heating mechanism for Jinxsy and the men to use when they're out on the range in the winter. Trying things out to see if they work is called experimentation, Artie," she said with scornful emphasis. "I needed a heat source, and the kitchen was convenient."

"I told you about treating the house as an extension of your workshop," Artie said warningly.

"And I told you not to touch it," Claudia said, leaving Helena's side and squaring off in front of her guardian. "The self-heater needed to be carefully handled, that's why I told you I would take it off the stove." Seeing them face to face, Myka noticed that Artie wasn't much taller than Claudia, though considerably more rotund.

"And fifteen minutes later, when you hadn't gotten around to it, I took matters into my own hands," Artie growled.

"And just about had them blown off at the wrists," Claudia snapped.

In part because she wanted to defuse the tension between them and in part because she was genuinely curious, Myka asked, "What happened?"

"Because Artie was on the verge of letting the self-heater drop to the floor, Marta used some kitchen towels –" Claudia started.

"To take it from me and throw it out the back door," Artie interrupted.

"Where it exploded and killed a couple of chickens," Claudia finished. "By the way, we're having fried chicken for lunch."

They continued to glare at each other until Artie threw his hands up in frustration and shouted "Enough!" Swiveling his head toward Helena, he said, "I blame you for this."

"Me?" Helena exclaimed. "I'm not the one who conducted an experiment without taking the proper precautions." She leveled her own glare at Claudia before turning it on Artie. "And I'm also not the one who ignored instructions not to touch something."

"But you encourage her in all this," Artie sputtered.

"Scientific inquiry should always be encouraged," Helena said loftily.

"Let me hear you say that when she burns the house down around our ears," Artie muttered.

As the three stood united in their grievances with one another, Myka tried to hide a smile. "Marta's waving us into the dining room," she said as casually as she could, hoping no one would notice that Marta (whoever she was) was nowhere to be seen and hoping as well that the dining room was straight ahead because that was the direction she was taking. Artie, Claudia, and Helena followed without comment, and after passing through a short hallway, more of an archway, actually, over the entrance of which the mounted head of a buck seemed to glassily eye them, they entered the dining room.

A long, trestle table covered with a simple oilcloth took up the center of the room, and a buxom woman, graying blond hair in braids wrapped around her head, was moving around it, setting down platters of chicken. Behind her, from the kitchen, trooped in several of the ranch's hands, who crowded together in confusion upon seeing Myka and Helena. The last of the hands, a man with pleasant-looking features and close-cropped blond hair, took charge, nodding to one to pull out a chair for Helena while he slid out a chair for Myka. "Steve Jinx," he said, carefully pushing a seated Myka closer to the table.

"Myka Bering," she said as he took the chair next to her.

With their sweat-stained shirts and deeply tanned faces, the men looked alike, but Helena readily put a name to each of them, greeting them in turn. Most of them stared down at the table as she spoke to them, mumbling back a "Good afternoon" or a "Mrs. Wells" in acknowledgment while a few were in an agony of blushes.

"If only I had that effect on men," Claudia said with an insincere sigh from the foot of the table.

"Be just as glad that you don't," Artie said, scowling at Helena, who sat across from him. "The fact that every man within 50 miles of Sweetwater knows her name is not something to be emulated."

"You told me I should find a role model, and I found one who likes science and math and doesn't mind the occasional destructive experiment. It's not as though she's giving me lessons on how to be a prostitute." Claudia said, reaching for a platter of chicken.

Silverware dropped on plates, and Artie choked on his water. The men who had been uncontrollably blushing a few minutes before turned crimson, and even Steve Jinx put his napkin to his mouth to muffle his laughter. Only Claudia and Helena seemed unaffected, Claudia deliberating between a wing and a drumstick and Helena calmly unfolding her napkin and putting it over her lap. "Don't despair, Mr. Nielsen," she said with a wicked grin. "I am inimitable."

As Artie rolled his eyes, Steve whispered to Myka from behind his napkin. "Before you even ask, yes, they're always like this."

Marta (what else could such a robustly Nordic-looking woman be named, Myka thought) returned from the kitchen, arms laden with bowls of fried potatoes and apples. As she placed them on the table with the eager assistance of the men, she called out something in a language Myka didn't recognize but which sounded like German, the declarative punch of the syllables imprinting themselves on the air as if straight from the _Journal_'s press. A few minutes later another woman entered the dining room from the kitchen. At first, Myka didn't take notice of her, her attention caught by the empty chair at the head of the table where a full place setting lay unused and unremarked. But the sudden dart of Helena's head plus the silence that had fallen over the table again made Myka look up. The woman was as blond as Marta but thirty years younger, and if Myka sometimes pictured Helena as a princess from a Scott or Dumas romance, all breeding and elegance, this woman was a princess from a fairy tale. Not ethereal like they frequently were, her presence was too physical, from her height to her breasts and hips, which pulled at the seams of a dress that had originally not been her own but made over from another's. But she had their loveliness, a perfection of feature and complexion that, in the fairy tales, always marked her for punishment by a queen tormented by envy.

Sucking a shred of meat from a bone, Claudia gestured offhandedly at her. "This is Liesl, Marta's niece. Fresh from the old country."

Liesl smiled, showing, of course, perfectly even, white teeth. She carried slices of bread on plates that she set at Artie's elbow and then, rounding the table, at Myka's. Helena's eyes had never left Liesl's face, and she seemed to be struggling with a kind of baffled recognition. "Woher kommen sie, Liesl?" She asked.

Liesl's smile grew broader, but her aunt answered for her in a rapid-fire stream of German, shooing Liesl back to the kitchen. "I believe," Artie said smugly, "that Marta said Liesl grew up in a very traditional, very devout family in Bavaria, and that she is happy working on the ranch. Meaning, my dear Mrs. Wells, that Liesl is not looking for additional employment."

"I understood that as well, Mr. Nielsen, but thank you," Helena said sardonically, picking up her fork and turning over a slice of fried potato. Her expression remained troubled as she stared at the piece of potato, and Myka discovered that her own appetite had left her. She also found that she was beginning to watch the entrance to the kitchen to see if Liesl would return. Spearing her chicken thigh with more vigor than necessary, Myka reminded herself that it was none of her business that Helena was taking an interest in the blindingly beautiful new hire on the Donovan ranch. Turning to Steve, she began to ask him questions about the ranch. Facts, such as how many head of cattle the ranch supported and how many men were employed, were useful, unlike the questions running around in Myka's mind about why Helena was disturbed by Liesl's presence and how it was that Helena appeared to think she knew her. Steve was obligingly responsive, and as he answered each of her questions, Myka began to relax. He asked her questions about the paper in turn, but although Myka sensed that his interest in her was genuine she knew, without being able to articulate why, that it was of a different order than Pete's or, for that matter, Helena's.

The squeak of a chair being pushed back disrupted the flow of conversation around the table, and Claudia stood up, patting her overalled stomach. "Wonderful lunch, but it's time to get to the workshop. Helena, are you ready?"

Helena looked down the table at Myka and then at Claudia. "I think Myka will be joining us, Claudia."

"Oh, that's fine," Claudia said, cocking her head to one side and appearing to measure Myka with a glance. "I'm not sure what protective gear we have that will fit her, but we can cobble something together."

Myka mouthed 'protective gear' at Helena, but Helena had assumed her best sphinx-like expression.

"Why don't I take Miss Bering out in the trap and show her the ranch?" Steve interjected. "We've been talking about it over lunch, but seeing it would make for a stronger impression."

"That would be lovely," Myka said, trying to hide her relief. While she wanted to see Claudia's workshop, she wanted to do so at a time when the wearing of protective gear wasn't necessary.

"Of course, if that's what you would prefer," Helena conceded. Her eyes had narrowed, but nothing else in her expression suggested she was amused. After a long look at Steve, she flashed a bright smile at Myka. "I hope you have an enjoyable ride."

As Steve helped Myka from her chair, he said close to her ear, "She didn't mean a word of what she just said, you know."

Myka waited on the back porch of the house, while Steve went to the barn to harness horses to the trap. Helena and Claudia were walking through the long grass to a structure far away from both the house and the outbuildings. She had watched as Helena put on a large apron that covered her from her shoulders to her feet, and it had the same heaviness and sheen as Claudia's overalls. Its stiffness impeded her movement, but she still managed to look graceful, especially when she glided close to where Liesl was storing leftovers from the meal. Once again Helena had said a few words to her in German, and this time, with Marta busy in the dining room, Liesl gratefully responded. When Marta entered the kitchen carrying dirty plates, Helena just as gracefully glided away, and only then did Myka release the fold of her skirt she had unconsciously clenched in her hand.

Steve drove the trap close to the house and jumped down from the seat to help Myka up. He held out a Stetson with a slightly crushed crown to her. "There's no cover for the trap. Sorry I couldn't come up with anything better to protect you from the sun."

Myka put it on her head, an incipient swagger to her step, and she felt more than a little ridiculous at playing the cowboy. Steve directed the trap past the barn, the corrals, the bunkhouse, and Claudia's workshop. In the distance, cows switched their tails and dipped their heads in and out of the grass, and on the lip of a swale, where the barbed wire fence was bent almost to the ground, the posts drunkenly tilted, two hands were making repairs. They shouted to Steve, who acknowledged them with a wave. Myka had expected him to visibly relax once he was outside the house, much as the other hands, on their way back to their chores, had joked and laughed amongst themselves, the constraint that had kept them silent and almost locked into their chairs lifted by the absence of their employers. But Steve acted no differently than he had in the dining room, apparently as at ease in the Donovan home as out on the range.

"How long have you known Claudia?" Myka asked.

"Since she was this high," Steve said, holding his hand a couple of feet in the air above the trap's floor. "I became friends with Joshua in boarding school. We roomed together in college, and he talked me into coming out here and helping him to run the place once their father died. It's like she's my little sister too."

"The empty chair at the table, the place setting. That's for Joshua?"

Steve nodded, looking between the horses' ears. The horses plodded through the grass, and the trap, Myka decided as it creaked over the uneven terrain, was even less comfortable than Helena's carriage. "We were all devastated, but Claudia wouldn't let go. Still hasn't, not completely. For someone who believes that everything has a scientific explanation, she's convinced that Joshua's spirit is hovering around the ranch. That's why there's the empty chair at the table, and why his bedroom has never been touched, and why his boots are by the door. She thinks he won't be able to rest until his killer is caught."

Myka scanned the prairie, pretending to take an interest in the flight of birds disturbed by the trap's complaining approach. Though he talked about Claudia's loss in a voice as calm as it was when he described the workings of the ranch over lunch, it was clear he also mourned Joshua Donovan. He was looking away from her, his head pulled to the side, and there was a tremor in his hands that caused the reins to twitch against his skin. "I understand that he died in a confrontation with rustlers."

"That's what they say," he said flatly.

"But you don't believe it," she prompted gently.

"Joshua wasn't a fool. He wouldn't have taken on rustlers by himself." The twitching of the reins increased and Steve's voice hoarsened. "Where some of the boys found his body, there was no evidence there had been rustlers. The fence had been cut, but there was no sign of a fire, that any cattle had been rebranded. It wasn't even a place where we let them graze. The ground's too rocky to grow grass and the pitch is too steep for the cows. And even if he had met up with rustlers, he would have never turned his back on them. He trusted whoever shot him, at least enough that he felt he could walk away without getting a bullet in his back."

Myka wanted to press him further, but the grief and anger chasing each other across his face dissuaded her. However, after a rough swipe at his eyes, Steve continued. "Claudia thinks it's one of the small ranchers or farmers around here. A number of them have been grumbling for years about how the Donovans stole their land from them. But that's all it's been, grumbling. None of them would have killed Joshua over it. Besides, none of them would have stooped so low as to take his ring."

"His ring?" Myka repeated.

"His father left him his ring, black onyx set in a silver band. He always wore it, but when his body was found, the ring was missing. Claudia and I searched the ranch for weeks, and we couldn't find it." Steve laughed, though it held no humor. "It didn't have any value, except sentimental value. The killer couldn't have gotten much for it, whoever he was. Sheriff Lattimer was out here for days, and after he couldn't pick up the trail, Claudia hired Pinkertons. They couldn't find anything either. She has a $5,000 reward for anyone who can lead us to his killer."

Steve lapsed into silence, and Myka swallowed her questions. She could encourage her father to publish a piece in the _Journal_ reminding readers that the murder remained unsolved. Perhaps an article on cattle rustling, one that would implicitly point up the differences between how rustlers were known to operate and what seemed a poorly staged scene for a murder. It would be interesting to see how James MacPherson responded to the renewed interest in Joshua Donovan's death. Not aware that she was voicing her thoughts aloud, she mused, "I'd like to see where he was killed."

Steve, who had been staring once more between the horses' ears, looked at her in surprise. "It's in a remote area of the ranch. It would take us the rest of the afternoon to get there."

Myka flushed. "I'm so sorry. That must have sounded awful. I was just thinking of ways the _Journal_ could help you and Claudia find answers." She gingerly touched his sleeve. "Please forgive me."

Steve covered her fingers with his hand. "Actually it's a relief to talk about it with someone who didn't know Joshua. All Claudia, Artie, and I manage to do is upset each other." He gave Myka's hand a friendly squeeze before releasing it. "Since his death, it's almost as if Claudia has been on a mission to kill herself. She's gone mad with the experiments. Artie thinks Mrs. Wells has been egging her on, but she's been steering Claudia away from some of her more dangerous ideas and drumming it into her head that, no matter what she takes on, she needs to be safe about it."

Myka smiled to herself, imagining Helena in her scientist's apron counseling caution, her dark eyes magnified by a futuristic set of safety lenses. The intensity with which they could focus – Myka shivered at the fantasy of imploding under such a directed glare. A black sun. . . incandescent. . . .Myka shivered again, wondering if it was from fear or excitement.

"Are you cold?" Steve asked, eyes widening in astonishment.

Myka's flush returned. "Not at all," she said softly.

Steve turned the trap to the west, saying he would show her Jackrabbit Creek. Myka recalled that it was the site of the submarine's sinking and was both reassured and a little disappointed, she would have had to admit if asked, to see that "creek" was not a misnomer for "river." While it was wide and, according to Steve, deeper than many creeks, unless Helena and Claudia had launched the submarine during spring flooding, they had been in no imminent danger of drowning. Taking off their shoes and socks, stockings in Myka's case, she and Steve walked the narrow strip of sand bordering the creek, digging out arrowheads and skipping stones across the water's surface. Afterward he drove the trap farther north until they stopped in front of a rise whose face had weathered away under the wind and rains of a million years or more. Steve pointed out the fossils of ancient fish in the rock and noted that Claudia had found the fossilized bones of some small mammals. She had set aside a space in her workshop to begin constructing skeletons; what she couldn't find she would create with the assistance of drawings from experts on the subject.

The shadow of Joshua's death had disappeared, at least for the time being, and Myka admired how much at ease Steve was with himself, how restful it must feel not to be besieged by endless worries and questions. Unlike her own mind, the series of compartments into which the worries and questions would need to be firmly, sometimes violently, shut, Myka pictured Steve's mind as a body of water whose tranquility was rarely disturbed, and even then the disturbance would be quickly absorbed, leaving nothing more than a ripple attesting to its passing. Nothing would appear foreign or alarming to a mind like that, and the most unfamiliar emotions would be accepted without judgement.

"You must be kidding," he said in disbelief when Myka haltingly tried to explain her appreciation of the balance he seemed to have achieved. "When Joshua invited me out here to work with him, I didn't know the first thing about ranching. I was sleepless for weeks and lived in constant fear that I was going to decimate his herd. But there's nothing like being out on the prairie for days on end following a bunch of cows." He grinned. "Weeks of boredom broken by a few moments of terror when, say, a thunderstorm sets off a stampede. You learn what to take seriously and what to let go of. There's always more to let go of than what you think."

Late in the afternoon they returned to the house. Myka resolved to try what Steve practiced, to let go of those things that, despite how they might unnerve or frustrate her, were unimportant. Helena's interest in the new serving girl, Liesl, was a perfect example of something she should let float out of her mind. Whom Helena pursued, for whatever reason, had nothing to do with the _Journal_, and that was the basis for her relationship with Helena, the paper.

The resolution lasted until she and Steve, laughing together over a tale he had told her about his first days as foreman, entered the parlor at Claudia's welcoming halloo. Helena was sitting on a sofa, chatting with Liesl, in German of course, as she poured Helena a cup of tea. Myka felt the smile die on her lips as Liesl handed Helena the teacup, blushing prettily at Helena's no doubt complimentary remarks. Though witnessing such a cozy scene was unnerving, Myka firmly told herself that it didn't matter, it couldn't affect the _Journal_, but she felt the image of the two of them, their heads so close together, begin to lodge itself in her mind, and, instead of calmly shooing it away, she crammed it into the compartment labeled Things Not to Think About.

Helena tilted her head, sending them an inquiring and not entirely friendly glance. After a sip of her tea, she said, "We were beginning to wonder if we should send out a search party, but by all appearances you were in no need of rescue." Her tone remained light, but Steve eyed her warily as he perched on the edge of a rocking chair and plucked one of Leena's cookies from a plate that Liesl offered him.

Feeling as though an apology was expected of her, Myka surveyed her wrinkled stockings and her shoes, still encrusted with sand from the creek. Her forearms were sunburned and her nose too, if the warm tightness of her skin was any indication. But she had nothing to apologize for, Helena hadn't asked that she be back by a certain time, and Claudia didn't seem to care, burrowed into the depths of an old wing-back chair and leafing through the pages of a catalog. Claudia put the catalog aside. "The longer you two were gone, the more distracted Helena became. She was on the verge of mixing an acid with something it should never be mixed with and killing us both."

"If you had better labels for the bottles," Helena said tartly, "it never would have happened."

"I told her not to worry, Jinxsy, that Myka was safe with you." Claudia yawned and stretched, extending her legs and swinging them on top of an ottoman. "Toss me one of the cookies, will you?"

With a flick of his wrist, Steve sent a cookie spinning through the air and Claudia neatly grabbed it. Belatedly realizing that she was still standing, Myka sat down on the opposite end of the sofa from Helena. Liesl was immediately at Myka's side, offering her a glass of lemonade. Myka's eyes met two of the clearest blue, their whites impeccably white. Liesl gestured toward the cookies, but Myka shook her head. Did the woman have no flaw? Myka knew her own eyes were red-rimmed from the dust and blinking at the sun. Who wouldn't prefer to look into Liesl's as Helena was doing now, Liesl, having wasted no time turning to Helena, poised to refill her cup. Helena murmured a soft refusal, and Liesl, with a look at Helena that Myka could characterize only as regretful, left the room.

"Well, tell us, what were the two of you up to?" Claudia said around a mouthful of cookie.

"Not much," Steve said. "I took her to Jackrabbit Creek and then we went looking for fossils."

"Did you bring me back anything?" Claudia eagerly asked.

"Nope, but the next time Myka comes out, we'll all go fossil hunting." Steve tried to include Helena in his broad grin, but Helena was staring into her teacup.

"I had no idea the two of you went on an expedition. It would have been nice to have been forewarned since we won't make Sweetwater before nightfall," Helena said irritably.

Myka said, "I didn't know that we were on a schedule." Again, she had sensed that she was expected to apologize, but she continued to feel none was owed. If Helena wanted to fret about returning late to Sweetwater, she could fret. It wasn't as though Myka's father would be waiting up for her; the odds were he would have to be hauled home from the Rusty Spur.

"Ooooh, frost," Claudia wriggled in her chair in an approximation of a shiver.

Both Myka and Helena glared at her, and Steve signaled to Claudia to button her lip. But Claudia ignored the warning, cheekily teasing Helena. "It's not like you to be such an old maid about this." She lifted her shoulders and spread out her arms. "We have plenty of room if you want to stay over. So, they lost track of time, so –"

"Claudia!" Helena exclaimed, rubbing the back of her neck. "Desist, please." She stood up, placing her cup carefully on the table in front of the sofa. "Mr. Jinx, if you wouldn't mind bringing my carriage around, I'd be most grateful."

Steve jumped to his feet, shooting another cautioning look at Claudia. He smiled ruefully at Myka, which did not go unseen by Helena, whose lips thinned into a nearly bloodless line. "Unless, of course, you'd like to take Claudia up on her offer and spend the evening here," she said to Myka. "I wouldn't want to cut short your time with Mr. Jinx. I can send out the carriage for you tomorrow."

"No, I'm quite ready to return," Myka said icily, sweeping past Helena and heading, she hoped, toward the verandah. Behind her she could hear Claudia say, "What's gotten into you? Did you inhale something in the workshop?" Then a beat later, a yell of "Artie, come out and say goodbye."

Myka stood at the top of the steps and edged to the side as Helena came out onto the verandah with Claudia. Artie joined them, adding figures on a piece of paper he flattened against the railing and distractedly offering his farewells. Driving the carriage around the side of the house, Steve pulled on the reins to halt the horses and jumped down from the seat. Claudia followed Helena and Myka to the carriage, fiercely hugging Helena and then, to Myka's surprise, hugging her almost as hard. "It's either kill you or learn to share Helena with you," she whispered into Myka's ear.

Before Myka could fully take in what Claudia had said, she noticed that Liesl had slipped onto the verandah and was waving goodbye. Helena called out to her in German and Liesl responded, glancing Myka's way. Myka swallowed and took the rare, extra precaution of locking the Things Not to Think About compartment and settled herself in the carriage. Helena set the horses at a faster pace as the shadows began to lengthen across the prairie, and for a long while the only sounds were the squeaks of the carriage and the dulled clops of the horses' hooves. Finally Helena unbent enough to say, "Despite what I may have said earlier, I sincerely hope that you enjoyed seeing the ranch with Mr. Jinx."

"Whether I enjoyed spending the afternoon with Mr. Jinx is completely independent of your hopes or good wishes or, for that matter, the absence of them." Myka said as starchily as she could.

In response to the rebuff, Helena slapped the reins and the horses increased their speed. Soon they were flying past the MacPherson ranch. The house still looked oversized for its surroundings but less ominous, the windows merely reflecting their passing in the waning light. Myka no longer had the impression that the house was maliciously winking behind their backs. In search of a peace offering, she thought of mentioning her ideas for reigniting interest in Joshua Donovan's death. As she explained her belief that a renewed emphasis on finding his killer might also have the added benefit of drawing out James MacPherson, Helena began to frown.

"I won't have you filling the _Journal_ with supposition," she said curtly.

"There won't be any supposition. Just the facts as they're currently known," Myka said, dismayed at Helena's negative reaction. "Which aren't many."

"That's why I particularly want to guard against innuendo." Helena bent forward on the seat, calling to the horses to go faster.

"Stop the carriage." Helena looked at her in disbelief, and Myka was taken aback by her own temerity. "Stop the carriage, please. I want to talk about this, and I can't think when we're bouncing about."

Helena steadily pulled on the reins, slowing the horses down. She turned on the seat to face Myka as the horses, taking advantage of the respite, began to nuzzle at the grass. "There will be no supposition, no innuendo. That's not how we. . . my father runs a paper, and I thought that's why you hired him, because he prints the facts. I don't know who killed Joshua Donovan, no one does, and that's the problem. A 19-year old girl back there still sets out a plate for her brother every night. If people read a story reminding them that Joshua's murder remains unsolved, someone might recall some little detail that leads to capturing his killer. That's the only real benefit I'm looking for."

Helena didn't seem mollified by the explanation, her chin lifting stubbornly, her jaw set. "You don't poke at James MacPherson with a stick, you stab him with a sword. We don't have a sword."

"If he was involved with Joshua's death, perhaps he'll develop a guilty conscience or somebody will choose to speak up now when he didn't before. And if Mr. MacPherson didn't have a hand in it, maybe he'll be moved to help find the killer." Myka earnestly persisted.

Helena rolled her shoulders, as if she was carrying on an argument with some part of herself as well. "I don't think putting him on the alert is a good idea. If my suspicions are correct, he's a dangerous man."

"This isn't about MacPherson, it's about Joshua," Myka cried. Her hands had knotted together in her lap, and she stared at the grass rippling in the wind. Birds were chirruping as they searched out their nesting places for the evening, and Myka distantly appreciated the peacefulness of the setting, a marked contrast to the discord between her and Helena. "We would never publish anything that would endanger Claudia's safety," she said quietly.

"It's not Claudia's safety I'm worried about," Helena said, not meeting Myka's eyes. "I'll take what you said under advisement."

Myka took a deep breath. "I'm not asking for your permission." She wasn't sure how Helena would respond; she wasn't even sure that Helena had heard her. Helena didn't move, didn't look at her, didn't seem to be sharing the same space with her. The birds' chirping, so pleasant-sounding a few minutes ago, had become grating, and the prairie, bathed in an amber light when the carriage had stopped, was growing dim and indistinct. Under the darkening sky, the waving grass had an eerie, spectral quality to it that prickled the hairs at the back of Myka's neck.

Helena picked up the reins and clucked at the horses; the carriage's wheels protestingly turned. "Then I believe our discussion is at an end."

Night had fallen by the time they arrived in Sweetwater, the sun only a few streaks of pink and orange on the horizon. Myka had thought nothing could equal the misery of living through her father's sullen silences after a drinking bout. Not speaking yet sitting so close to Helena that she could feel the brush of Helena's dress as she adjusted her hold on the reins rivaled it. As the carriage rolled toward the _Journal_'s office, Myka spoke if only to hear a voice for the first time since they had driven past the MacPherson ranch. "Thank you for introducing me to Claudia." It was feeble but not anything that could start another argument

"It was my pleasure," Helena said.

She hadn't said it sarcastically or angrily or in the colorless way people frequently said things when they would have been sarcastic or angry except for civility's sake. So Myka couldn't help herself, she pressed. "Was it really?"

Helena laughed, the relief in it unmistakable, and Myka felt her own tension begin to dissipate. "Despite the moments when I was decidedly not pleased, overall I very much enjoyed taking you out to the ranch." She stopped the carriage at the back of the building, at the door to the Berings' living quarters.

No light shone through the windows, and though her father might have gone to bed early, Myka was sure he was already at the Rusty Spur. She needed to climb down from the seat, say her goodbyes, and let Helena go home. But she didn't move, and Helena gave no indication that she was eager to have her leave. "Who is Liesl to you?"

It wasn't important to know this now, to know this at all. Steve Jinx wouldn't have asked such a question. In fact, were he in Myka's place, he probably would have forgotten Liesl by now. Or, if he hadn't forgotten her, he would have been able to dismiss her, deciding that her effect upon Helena wasn't worth worrying about. But Myka could never be like Steve, not when it came to Helena. She couldn't even keep true to her fantasy of filing Helena away in compartments marked "Helena" and "Things Not to Think About." Helena would always elude her control; the version in her mind, scarcely less corporeal than the real Helena, was just as distracting, teasing, overwhelming.

"Nothing, other than she reminds me of someone I used to know." Helena paused. With a crisp decisiveness that signaled the subject was closed, she said, "Liesl is looking for someone to help her with her English, especially reading and writing. As you may imagine, she's already concluded that Mr. Nielsen and Claudia wouldn't be the most patient of teachers, and Mr. Jinx is too busy. I suggested you."

"Me?"

"You would be compensated, of course—"

Myka replayed the snatches of conversation she had heard between the two women in her mind. Although she understood German no better now than she had a few hours ago, it was vastly easier to picture Liesl's dimpled smile motivated by Helena's listing of candidates to tutor her than by compliments on how pretty she was or how blue her eyes were. "I'd be happy to help Liesl," she responded, astonished that she could say "happy" and "Liesl" in the same breath.

"Good. I told her to speak with you the next time she's in town."

The horses were stamping and tossing their heads, ready, if no one else in the carriage was, for the day to end. Myka gathered up her skirts and reluctantly descended from the seat. "Helena," she said and let the name hang in the air between them, knowing Helena would recognize that this was the first time she had called her by her name. "I had a very good time with Mr. Jinx today, but he's not you."

Helena grew still, and much as it had earlier in the day when Myka had held Helena's hand, the stillness spoke to everything that Myka hadn't the courage yet to put into words. But the moment passed, and after a toss of her head as dismissive and impatient as that of her horses, Helena said, "They never are, darling."


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Helena stared at the columns of numbers. She had been staring at them so long that they seemed to crawl up and down the page. Rubbing her eyes, she reached for the cup of coffee on her desk. She much preferred a good cup of Earl Grey, but coffee was the only thing that cut through the haze of exhaustion that enveloped her these days. She wasn't sleeping well; in addition to familiar nightmares about Christina, she dreamed troubling dreams about MacPherson, in which he was chasing Joshua Donovan, aiming a gun at his back. And if she wasn't dreaming about MacPherson, she was dreaming about Myka, which had her moaning and thrashing in her bed for a completely different reason. What a minx that woman could be without even realizing it. Helena smiled to herself, recalling, as she frequently did, that morning in the _Journal_'s office when Myka had applied the ointment to her fingers, rubbing it into her skin with a sensual stroking that had dissolved every bone in her body. And then Myka had looked up at her, those pale green eyes both sly and tender, teasing her about 'rough wooing' in a voice made husky by the intensity between them. It would have been enough to leave the most virtuous of women undone, and Helena had never prided herself on her virtue. In another place and time, she would have seduced Myka then or least made a sally at it; she was too experienced not to be able to persuade another to give in to his, or her, desire. But Myka's father had practically stumbled into the room, as if some vestige of paternal responsibility had woken him to the threat Helena posed to his daughter's innocence.

Yet Warren Bering's bleary disapproval of her presence wouldn't have been enough to stop her had she been determined to have Myka. She had been intimate with others under more challenging circumstances, when the risk of discovery wasn't mitigated by a closed door. It wasn't the unappealing setting of a newspaper office that had stopped her either; she had had encounters in worse places. It wasn't even that she would be taking from Myka something she should surrender to someone worthier of her; Helena had seduced virgins whose names she barely knew and never regretted it.

Her own desire had been the impediment. It threatened to turn what should be – and always had been before – a deliberate orchestration of movement and suggestion into a frenzied grinding of bodies. She had played the overcome lover many times before, her gasping and eager fumbling designed to erode her partners' self-control; she remained in command and the pleasure she experienced, if she experienced it, she derived from how quickly she could bring them to a fever pitch. Feeling Myka's fingers graze her skin with the soft ticklishness of a strand of hair, Helena knew that she would be the one to break, to beg. She could hear the first hint of it in how she said Myka's name, half-sigh, half-groan, as if forced out by an intolerable pressure. So she had let the moment die, under Mr. Bering's sanctimonious disapproval (which still smarted more than she cared to admit) and Myka's shame.

While she would insist that she was responding to her own awareness of the danger Myka presented to her peace of mind and not to the concerns of Warren Bering or any Sweetwater resident that she was an inappropriate companion for a young woman of good character, she had limited their interactions. She let Leena play the librarian when Myka came to borrow books, and when she needed to discuss _Journal_ business, she ensured she conducted those conversations with Myka's father.

It hadn't helped. The jealousy she had displayed at the Donovan ranch, made only the more appalling because Claudia, though innocent or, just as possible, indifferent to its motivation, was all too appreciative of its exposure of a chink in Helena's armor, still simmered, rising like bile at the back of her throat whenever she saw Myka in the company of Sheriff Lattimer. One Saturday when Claudia had come to town, they passed Myka and the sheriff on a stroll along the main street. Helena had greeted them pleasantly enough, or so she thought, relieved in spite of herself that Myka neither clung to his arm nor seemed particularly aware of the affectionate glances he gave her, but they had no sooner gone by than Claudia stood on tiptoe to whisper in Helena's ear, "I think she and Jinxsy make a better-looking couple, don't you?" Leena was no comfort, remarking over breakfast when Helena had growled at the consistency of her eggs and the toughness of her toast that "Self-denial doesn't become you."

Helena sought what solace she could in her work at the Spur. There were always discussions to be had with Freddie about the liquor supply and problem customers as well as tiffs and complaints among the girls to resolve. When nothing was pressing on those fronts, there were the saloon's accounts to manage. Which was what she was attempting to do now with little success. As she leaned back in her chair, drinking the truly awful coffee Freddie had made this morning, her eyes lighted on the latest week's _Journal_, which had included an article revisiting the mysterious circumstances of Joshua Donovan's death. As Myka had vowed, the story kept to the facts, departing from them only at the end to comment on the injustice of a promising life cut short. Beyond receiving like-minded comments from its readers, the _Journal_ had garnered no information that could help identify Joshua's killer or killers.

A tiny bell affixed to the wall above Helena's head jingled once, twice, then stopped. A crude alert, nothing more than a cord crawling the walls from the bar to the office, it was nonetheless effective. Freddie would tug on the cord once to signal her to come out to the bar and twice if someone was coming back to the office to speak with her privately. Three rings, which were for emergencies only, meant Helena was to come out with her rifle loaded.

She knew better than to hope that Myka was coming to see her, but she couldn't pretend that her heart wasn't beating faster and that her hands weren't already touching her hair in needless reassurance that every strand was in place. No sooner had she assumed a position of studious concentration over the ledger that James MacPherson entered the room. Her annoyance wasn't feigned. "I don't remember our having an appointment this morning."

"I thought I might take the liberty of dropping by." He sat down on the chair across from the desk, making a minute adjustment to the line of his camel-colored pants. The scent of the pomade he used in his hair filled the room, rich yet with an oily undertone, much like the man himself, Helena decided. He smiled, but as usual it never reached his eyes, which remained hard and appraising. Scanning the discolored and marred walls, his eyes briefly lingered on the rifle in the corner before meeting Helena's impatient stare. "Every time I visit the Spur, I'm always surprised by how little you've invested in it. For all the money you paid me for it, I would have expected a gaming hall, for that matter, a brothel, worthy of New York or London."

"I invest my money in my employees."

"But they make for such a poor return," he tsked. "The more you give them, the more they expect, and the less they produce."

"Strange, but I've found the converse is true." Helena's smile was just as tight and cool. "Surely you didn't drop by only to question my business sense."

"Some of the council members still have doubts about the wisdom of increasing the vice tax on the Spur. They fear it imposes an unnecessary hardship."

"Even if it did, I suspect the tax wouldn't be reduced."

"I admit I don't share their concern." MacPherson crossed his legs and relaxed against the back of the chair. It cracked loudly in the quiet of the room, and he turned to determine whether it was on the verge of giving way. Looking back at Helena, he raised an eyebrow. "On the other hand, perhaps I should if you can't afford better chairs."

"Or perhaps I don't want visitors in my office prolonging their stay."

He shrugged, dismissing her barb. "As I told the council, much of Sheriff Lattimer's time is spent breaking up fights that start here. Or removing public nuisances." He paused. "The men who can't hold their drink. You must see them, the ones who can barely totter out the doors or whom Sheriff Lattimer has to escort." Rubbing his chin, he rolled his eyes up toward the ceiling as though he were trying to recall something. He let his glance flicker back to Helena. "I understand he's taken home the _Journal_'s esteemed editor more than once."

Helena's smile didn't slip, but she began counting back from 100 in her mind. She hadn't needed to resort to such tactics before with MacPherson, but she realized she would be able to bear with only poor grace any comment he might make about Myka, and while she had formed no high opinion of Warren Bering as a man, he was Myka's father. "It's generally your men who are the cause of the problems," she said. "I've been thinking of levying my own tax on the Circle M men when they come to the saloon."

He laughed soundlessly. "Quite amusing. And will you levy an additional tax when they visit your girls?"

"A good number of them aren't allowed to visit my girls."

He wagged his head in disbelief. "How you stay in business is beyond my understanding. One might think you believe your whores should be accorded special treatment. Why such a soft spot for them, Mrs. Wells?"

She ignored that knowing, gloating tone in his voice. She had ignored it the past three years. "By 'special treatment' do you mean recognizing that they're human?" A tic appeared in his cheek, the only sign that she had scored a hit.

From the moment she had first stepped off the train in Sweetwater, with her accent and her unusual traveling companion and her wardrobe that cost more than some men made in a lifetime, MacPherson had tried to ferret out information about her. He was rich and well-connected enough to learn some things, who or, rather, what she was before she came to Sweetwater and other names she gone by. Though he maintained a certain level of circumspection when they were with others, limiting himself to the occasional veiled reference, when they had private conversations, his allusions grew broader and cruder. She let him enjoy showing off his knowledge of her secrets; for one thing, they weren't secrets, and for another, she preferred to let him believe he knew all there was to know about her. It helped to protect what she did want to keep from him.

"Certainly they're a far cry from a woman of pleasure like Charlotte Ramsey," he said. It wasn't the first time he had used the name in front of her, and as she always did when he flourished it like a magician's handkerchief, she maintained a front of polite disinterest. "It's said that an Astor paid $5,000 for an evening with her, never regretting a penny. And my friends tell me that Henry Tremaine still hasn't gotten over her sudden disappearance from his life. Supposedly he's turned New York upside down looking for her. Now, there's a. . . ." He leaned forward and fixed his eyes on her. "Well, how else can I put it? A whore who deserves special treatment."

"Whether she can command $5,000 or only 50 cents, she deserves to be treated with respect," Helena said, her eyes steadily meeting his.

MacPherson was the first to look away. Appearing to have tired of his game, he got up from the chair, looking askance at the seat, as if some uncleanliness, a food crumb or a flake of tobacco, had attached itself to his suit. Satisfied that he was carrying no mark of the Spur on him, he spent a moment adjusting the fall of his sleeves. She should have known by such an obvious stalling tactic that he was waiting until he had her attention before he launched a departing remark that he was confident would burrow under her skin, something better than jabs about Charlotte Ramsey. Later she wasn't sure what had given her away; it could have been as subtle as a twitch of her mouth when he had referred to Warren Bering. But he was always on the lookout for a weakness, and somehow, in some way, she had betrayed herself. "You seem to have taken quite an interest in the Berings, particularly Miss Bering. I don't recall you ever taking Mr. Sanderson out in your carriage."

Had he actually seen them that Saturday when they had driven past his ranch, or did he have spies everywhere? But she only blinked at him lazily, like a cat, with no especial curiosity. "Mr. Sanderson had a conveyance of his own. Miss Bering does not."

"I admit that she's a more attractive companion than Ralph Sanderson, though not to my tastes. She's a gawky thing, and her hair's frightful." His lips crimped in distaste.

"No doubt you would prefer her with a key in her back."

"Oh, I don't mind a little fire in a woman, Mrs. Wells. It makes taming her all the more pleasurable." His dark eyes bored into hers. When Helena didn't flinch, he again was the first to look away, pretending to examine the shine of his cuff links. "I mention Miss Bering not only because I find the sad spectacle of her father poor advertisement for the _Journal_ but also, since she too is associated with the paper, I'm concerned that her less than sterling character may further damage its reputation."

Helena's jaw had so firmly clamped shut that her molars were beginning to grind against each other. Starting another countdown from 100, she drew in a breath and said evenly, "Since you've never once indicated in the time I've owned the _Journal_ that its reputation was something that even crossed your mind, let alone weighed on it, I'm hard-pressed to know how to answer your concern, except to say, one, I don't listen to gossip, and, two, my concern is only that the Berings produce a newspaper worth reading."

"How can you keep readers when they see that the editor is a drunkard and his daughter a slut? I hear that Sheriff Lattimer is so often at their home that he might as well be paying rent. Do you know that one of the papers Warren Bering worked for dismissed him because his daughter's behavior called his judgment into question?" For the first time since he had entered the office, MacPherson's smile was genuine, broad and full of malice.

Lightheaded, Helena forgot where she was in her count. If the rifle in the corner had been loaded, she wouldn't have just pointed it at him, she would have shot him. But instead she had to remain at her desk, frozen in place, her face as still and as expressionless as she could make it. She knew he was goading her, but knowing that didn't stop her legs from shaking under her desk. The jibe about Sheriff Lattimer, she recognized, was only MacPherson indulging in gratuitous spite, but it left an ache in her all the same.

"She was keeping company with some young man, a thoroughgoing scoundrel by all accounts. The two disappeared overnight in a storm, and when a search party went out later to find them, well, let's say they were found in a compromising situation, _most_ compromising." He rested his hands on the back of the chair, leaning forward like a prosecutor ready to conclude a winning argument before a judge. "When her father demanded that her seducer, Martino I believe his name was, preserve what remained of her reputation by marrying her, it came to light that he was a bigamist. The Berings became laughingstocks, and the paper's publisher felt he had little choice but to ask Bering to move on. He feared the paper would lose all credibility."

Helena closed the ledger. She wouldn't be returning to the accounts, not today. She could hear Leena's voice in her mind, counseling her not to let her temper get the better of her. But the voice was too weak to withstand the fury that had begun to build from the moment MacPherson said 'Miss Bering.' "I don't know who told you this story," she said slowly.

"Oh, it's not a story. You can verify it yourself with the publisher of the Colorado Springs _Gazette_."

"Or why," Helena continued, undeterred. Both the pacing of her words and their force increased. "But let me tell you what I know about the Berings. I know that Warren Bering has a talent for uncovering corruption and chicanery and that the papers he has worked for have brought down men who, if they were well founded in their belief that they were above the law, discovered they weren't above public opinion. He's also the kind of newspaperman who won't let rest the murder of a young man who was no more the victim of cattle rustlers than Miss Bering is a trollop."

MacPherson rounded the chair to stand in front of the desk, thrusting his face close to Helena's. "Sweetwater is hardly a cesspool of corruption, and as for poor Mr. Donovan, there was no evidence pointing to anything other than an unfortunate encounter with outlaws. All the Berings will succeed in doing, Mrs. Wells, is creating trouble where none exists, and that would be a distressing outcome for everyone."

"I can only hope that you find it distressing, _most_ distressing," Helena said mockingly, her eyes flashing fire. She rose, causing MacPherson to begrudgingly inch himself backward. "And should we happen to find a cesspool, I'm sure you'll be at the bottom of it."

Flushing with anger, he spun away and stalked to the door. He reached for the knob but stopped mid-motion, leveling at Helena a menacing glare. "A whore is always a whore. Strip away her airs and her fancy dresses and the causes she adopts, and she'll spread her legs for the right price. I have only to find yours, Mrs. Wells."

"Whores on occasion may bestow their favors for free, but even then, Mr. MacPherson, you still couldn't afford me."

He slammed the door behind him, and Helena sank back onto her chair. She covered her face with her hands and groaned. She had done precisely what she had cautioned Myka that they shouldn't do – she had poked at MacPherson with a stick. She may have succeeded in getting in a jab or two around his eyes, but it was a sour satisfaction; all she had really accomplished was to let him know that she and the _Journal_ were on the hunt for him and, worse, that she was vulnerable where Myka Bering was concerned. She imagined Leena regarding her with disappointment, knowing better than anyone how much Helena was guided by her emotions. The mind that delighted in machines and scientific hypotheses was all too frequently charged with justifying the decisions that her emotions had already made.

She groaned again when she heard a knock at the door. Freddie craned his head around the jamb. "Thought you might like a refill."

She raised a hand in protest. "I've had enough coffee, thank you."

He grinned, showing her the bottle he had held behind his back. "It's got to be noon somewhere in the world, right?" He poured the whiskey in her cup, adding more after he took another look at her face. "I saw him leave."

Helena didn't pretend to sip. She took a gulp and enjoyed the burn down her throat. He was a dear man, and at this moment, she didn't care that his face hadn't seen soap and water in over a week or that his apron had needed changing two days ago. Freddie had been the saloon's janitor, dishwasher, and man of all purpose when she bought the saloon from MacPherson. Another man had been the bartender then, with a consumptive's emaciated frame but an avid eye for squeezing as much money as he could from the clientele, watering drinks and substituting rotgut for the better liquors where and when he could. He had also arranged with the card sharps who routinely visited the Spur to take a small percentage of their winnings in exchange for ignoring their blatant cheating at the tables. He had lasted less than a week under the new regime, and Helena put Freddie behind the bar. He dealt fairly with their customers and was gentle with the girls, and beyond that, he was a large, powerful man who could intimidate any drunken cowboy looking for a fight.

Blessedly he also had the capacity to recognize when she wanted silence and solitude. He put the bottle on her desk and stole quietly from the room. She tipped back in her chair until the back of it landed lightly against the wall. She wasn't sure how steady it would remain under her, but she didn't care, cradling her cup against her chest. She closed her eyes. Charlotte Ramsey. Before that, it had been Emily Lake, and before that, it had been Emily Curran. She had last been Helena Wells when she first arrived in New York over twelve years ago. She had booked passage on the steamer from Marseille as she had done most things back then, with an abandon that her companions mistook for mere pleasure-seeking. With the last of her 'blood money' as she had called it, she purchased a ticket for a country she had never seen and had never had much interest in visiting. She had no idea what would become of her once she landed in New York, nor did she care. Early on in the journey, she struck up an acquaintance with an American businessman returning home, and soon she was staying in his stateroom, a much grander one than her own. He was pleasant-looking with an amiable disposition, which was all that mattered. He was a serviceable enough distraction, and she was less likely to have nightmares about Christina when she slept in someone else's bed.

He wore no wedding ring nor mentioned a wife, but it was clear to Helena that he was married. His clumsy attempts at seduction, his wide-eyed appreciation of intimacies that had become routine to her spoke of a man who rarely strayed from the familiar, if dull, fidelities of marriage. The night before they landed in New York, he had insisted that they meet in her room, and in the early morning hours she woke to see him, fully dressed, carefully placing money on the top of her bureau. She didn't say a word as he left the room. She had briefly considered throwing the money away, but it was a generous sum, and she had first become a whore when she had taken Charles' money, not this man's.

She saw him once more as they were disembarking from the ship, and his eyes brushed her face only to swiftly move on, as if hers was no different from the hundreds of faces turned eagerly toward the city. In a rare act of thriftiness, she found lodgings at a boardinghouse, genteel if somewhat rundown, that she had overheard one of the passengers recommend to another. For a few days she mulled over her options, reading the classified section of the newspapers, but no one wanted a woman who was a skilled, if self-taught, machinist or could speak several languages. The openings were for maids or nannies, and Helena wasn't desperate enough yet for the former and the latter – she would never be able to bear being the caretaker of another woman's child. Never that.

As her money dwindled, she remembered the name of a man her friends (and she used that term loosely, having recognized them at the time for the hangers-on and leeches that they were) had urged her to look up once she was in New York. Alan Lawrence was handsome and charming, but he couldn't look at anything without appraising its value, whether it be a fine horse, a painting, or a woman. Even when he became her lover, which he did with an ease and a rapidity that would have once appalled Helena, he seemed to be evaluating her, grading every kiss and caress on a scale. Rolling away from him one afternoon, she asked almost sulkily, "Am I a disappointment?"

"Far from it. You're quite talented," he said, sitting up in the bed and placing a pillow behind his back. "I feel that you're wasting it all on me."

"Wasting it?"

Running a finger down her shoulder, he said, "I know a gentleman, more than one, actually, who would be very appreciative of you and very generous in their appreciation."

She had known, hadn't she? The friends who had given her Alan's name, they often showed up at theaters and restaurants with different men and women on their arms. Their clothes became more expensive and stylish, they held themselves with more confidence, and they more readily paid their share of the entertainment, whatever it happened to be. And they had told her to make sure to look up Lawrence if ever she was in need. She had been in need – she still was –and only now she was having the vapors like a frightened virgin? She was just following the course that had been marked for her from the day she had taken Charles' check.

"And how, darling," she rolled back toward him, "would I go about meeting them?"

Lawrence set her up in a suite of rooms he had rented and bought her a new wardrobe; the dresses were more revealing than was befitting for a lady and in vulgar colors, but the men who came to see her liked them. Their hands had more freedom to travel, and the cheaper fabric parted more easily under their groping. Two things she insisted on, keeping the locket she always wore, which Lawrence derided as an ugly piece of jewelry, and changing her name. It wasn't likely that the men she was consorting with would recognize the name "Wells" and she didn't care that her father and mother and brother would die with shame were they to know what she was doing, but changing her name made living with the memories of her grandfather less painful. So she used the name Emily Curran until Lawrence one day frowned in distaste, saying "It sounds Irish, and it makes the men think they're giving the housemaid a tumble. They can get that for free. You need to sell them an illusion."

"Meaning I need to sell them that I'm a lady?"

"You sold me," he said, his brows wrinkling in momentary confusion. "You can sell them."

She laughed then, the irony, she knew, utterly lost on him, but she changed her name to Emily Lake. She might have continued her arrangement with Lawrence, providing him a hefty percentage of her earnings, until he found someone younger and fresher, but one of the gentlemen she saw on a regular basis asked her to accompany him to a party, which was being held at a nondescript brownstone in a fashionable area of Manhattan. Compared to the other women there, in gowns she wouldn't have been embarrassed to wear to an event in London, she knew she looked like a tart, and her companion was clearly a station or two below the men playing billiards and smoking in the drawing room. But she would be damned if she would act the streetwalker, even if she resembled one. Her drawl more pronounced, her expression the replica of her mother's polite froideur, she acted the part of the grande dame, and there wasn't a man at the party who didn't take notice of her. As the evening wound down, and Helena was choosing between the young heir to a banking fortune and a portly, middle-aged man who was the owner of a successful bootblacking factory, a woman, older than the others, interrupted her flirtation, asking if she could have a moment of Helena's time.

Helena followed her into a parlor temporarily empty of guests. The woman closed the door. "You're taking clients away from my girls," she said. She stated it as a fact, coolly and neutrally, but her eyes, a rain-washed gray, were regarding her with an intensity that Helena instinctively registered as a threat. The woman was still lovely, although the lines around her mouth and the gray at her temples suggested that she was old enough to be Helena's mother. "Who sent you here?"

Helena knew the woman would not take kindly to being lied to. "No one sent me here. Mr. Bagley is a friend, and he invited me to accompany him."

"Mr. Bagley is a department store manager who couldn't get an invitation to a shoe-shine of any one of these men," the woman said dismissively. "I don't appreciate having my parties worked by a girl from someone else's stable. Who runs you?"

Helena silently cursed Lawrence. He had heard about the party and put a bug into Bagley's ear to take her. She should have known as soon as she stepped onto the Italian marble of the foyer that there had been no invitation extended to Bagley. Lawrence had wanted to see whom she could poach. "Alan Lawrence," she said.

"He's a two-bit hustler." The woman cocked her head, looking Helena up and down. "I would have had you thrown out except that you put on quite a performance. I've never had one of my girls so captivate a roomful of men." She paused, biting her lip. "How much does Lawrence pay you?"

"Not as much as you will," Helena said, giving the woman a cocky smile.

That was how she became one of Elizabeth Sloan's girls. She left the rooms Lawrence had let for her the same night and moved into the brownstone. It became her home for the next few months until she and the other women residing there were moved to an identical brownstone in an equally exclusive neighborhood. During the years that Helena worked for Mrs. Sloan the process was repeated several times, and she soon learned to keep little more with her than her clothing, toiletries, and a few books. There were never any reasons given for the moves; Mrs. Sloan simply issued the order through her assistant, a humorless heavy named Kincaid, who knocked on their doors telling them they needed to be "up and packed" by the next morning. Helena always assumed that once their neighbors figured out that the house next door was actually a brothel, they complained to the police or the city officials and they, in turn, warned Mrs. Sloan. Mrs. Sloan had a cozy relationship with the police and the city government; the commissioner and many of the officials closest to the mayor were frequent "guests" of Mrs. Sloan, and sometimes they would come to the house, not seeking the pleasure of the girls, but for fat brown envelopes that they would stuff into the pockets of their coats as they left.

Helena received no such fat envelopes. The men never paid her directly, paying Mrs. Sloan or, more frequently, Kincaid instead, and she received whatever Mrs. Sloan had decreed was the going wage at the time. It was not uncommon for the men, generally wealthy and well connected, to give their favorites among the girls gifts of jewelry or money, and Helena was very popular. But it was an unwritten rule that such gifts had to be reported to Mrs. Sloan, and she would determine whether or how much of the gift the girl could keep. Still, it was more money than Helena had realized working for Lawrence, even though she knew it was only a fraction of the price that Mrs. Sloan charged her clients. But Helena's needs were simple, and she was able to save most of the money she earned. Without articulating to herself why she was doing it, she began to invest the money in speculative ventures, and while some bore no fruit, others provided a tidy return, which she then reinvested. All the girls were given one day off a week, and Helena usually spent that day reading the financial sections of the various newspapers and making decisions as to how she would invest her funds.

She made virtually no attempts to become acquainted with the other girls. Mrs. Sloan didn't encourage camaraderie among her employees, most likely, Helena suspected, because she didn't want the girls to discover how little each of them was getting, but that couldn't answer for the girls' naked resentment of Helena's presence. She knew they called her the Duchess behind her back, and faced with their jealousy and dislike, she was only the more haughty when she was with them. Besides, most of the girls' tenures with Mrs. Sloan were short ones. Some fell victim to the usual consequences of the work, pregnancy or the pox, neither of which Mrs. Sloan tolerated, and while the former and sometimes the latter could be remedied by a visit to the doctor on her payroll, there was no guarantee that she would take the woman back. Others became too fond of the bottle or were laudanum users, and when their addictions grew uncontrollable or impaired their work or appearance, they soon disappeared from the house. Only rarely would a girl so charm a client that he would make her his mistress and establish her in her own home or apartment.

As for the work itself, Helena found the coquetry and playing up to the men before they retired to her room the most arduous aspect of it. Having to flatter the old men with their gouty noses and ample paunches that they were as virile as men half their age or reassure the younger men that they were Casanova reincarnated was tiresome. What irritated her the most, however, was having to pretend that she had no mind for literature or politics or science and to smile gratefully at her clients as they eagerly took on the task of educating her. They had no idea how often she was tempted to correct their mistakes. At least the physical intimacies were straightforward and, for the most part, quickly accomplished. Initially she found being in bed with men old, young, and in-between interesting, if only from a scientific point of view. For all the differences in their backgrounds and vocations, they were remarkably similar, in the end, in their sexual tastes. While there were those who needed to feel pain or inflict it to achieve release, Helena was never required to service them, Mrs. Sloan, offering her a rare, if backhanded, compliment by declaring that the whiteness of her skin was too valuable to run the risk of it being permanently scarred by an overenthusiastic client. The most unusual tastes Helena was asked to satisfy involved the voyeurs or the men who required multiple partners. Some men wanted to see her in bed with another man or they wanted a man to join them as a sexual partner; other men wanted to see her or share her with a woman.

Until she worked for Mrs. Sloan, Helena had never been intimate with another woman or, for that matter, considered being intimate with another woman. Most women Helena had known and these included women from families superior in wealth or status to her own were silly, simpering fools, willing to act the idiot for a man, or women, like her mother, who based their self-worth on how efficiently they ran a household. She couldn't abide either type, despite having to play the former on an almost nightly basis. But, in the end, she discovered that sex with a woman was little different from sex with a man; it was all just flesh and noise. When she led Mr. Hankins upstairs, giving Josie, a snub-nosed brunette across the room, a jerk of her head as a signal that she should join them, she felt no better or worse than when it was Mr. Benedict and she would nod to Timothy, one of the handful of young men Mrs. Sloan also employed, to follow them to her room.

One early autumn afternoon, which was distinctive only for the fact that it marked the second year that she had been with Mrs. Sloan, Helena was requested to attend to Mr. Hankins in another residence. In Mrs. Sloan's carriage, Kincaid drove her to yet another brownstone in yet another area of Manhattan. When Helena asked about the different arrangements, Kincaid only grunted in response, and she got down from the carriage no wiser about why she was meeting Mr. Hankins here and at this time of day than she had been earlier. As she had been instructed, she knocked on the door to the bedroom at the end of the second floor corridor, and a woman told her to enter.

The curtains had been drawn against the afternoon sun, but the gas jets had been lit, and Helena saw that Mr. Hankins was sitting in a chair close to the footboard of the enormous bed that took up most of the room. He was wearing, as he usually did during their appointments, a loosely belted robe. Mr. Hankins was solely a watcher, although, unlike her clients with similar appetites, he seemed to equally enjoy watching Helena with men and women. In the center of the bed, naked except for a sheet draped casually across her hips was the most beautiful woman Helena thought she had ever seen. Blond hair, the pale yellow of butter, spilled down her shoulders, and her complexion was so fair that the blue of her eyes seemed to gleam against her skin like sapphires.

She was balancing a glass of champagne on the mattress. "Come, get undressed, Alfie has been waiting, and I'm not sure how much longer he can wait." She laughed, a deep, good-humored laugh, and even Mr. Hankins (always Mr. Hankins to Helena), generally a silent man, issued a small chuckle.

Helena, normally graceful when she disrobed, fumbled at her buttons and ended up tripping over her dress. A robe lay over the back of a chair for her and just as she was about to slip it on, the woman called to her lazily from the bed, "Don't put it on just yet. Turn around. Alfie's been telling me how beautiful you are, and I want to see for myself."

Annoyed at the command implicit in the woman's voice, Helena nevertheless complied and turned toward the bed, letting the robe fall to the floor. The woman's eyes swept over her, then more slowly made their way down, lingering over Helena's breasts, her abdomen, the juncture of her thighs. "Jesus, you are beautiful," the woman said and then, her voice roughening, added, "Hurry over, I'm not sure how much longer I can wait." Helena had been surveyed, perused, appraised, measured, evaluated, weighed, appreciated, and admired thousands of times before but for the first time in a long time, she felt herself responding with something other than boredom or irritation. The blush began in her face and spread south, and the woman clapped in delight, almost upsetting her glass of champagne. The woman leaned over, placing the glass on a nightstand, the sheet slipping from her hips. Helena saw a thatch of pubic hair that was nearly as blond as the hair on the woman's head; she also had a better view of a body that was long and firmly muscled, with high, full breasts. Realizing that her heart rate had increased and that her palms were beginning to sweat, Helena wondered why it was this afternoon, with this woman that, for once, she could almost forget that she was a whore.

The woman patted the bed next to her. The smile she shared with Mr. Hankins was lascivious, but when she turned her head to meet Helena's nervous, faintly inquiring gaze, those amazing eyes gentled and while the frank desire in them took Helena's breath away, the sympathy in them returned it. "My name is Monika," she volunteered, "and I think we are going to become the best of friends." She intertwined her fingers with Helena's, carefully pulling her down onto the mattress beside her, and for the rest of that afternoon and into the evening, Helena did forget that she was a whore.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: I'm afraid Helena's backstory has taken on a life of its own. There's one more chapter to get her from there to here, so to speak, and then we're back to Bering & Wells. For those of you who don't mind some angst in a pairing, there's more of it to come. For those of you who are wondering when I'm going to put those two together, that's coming too (but that'll be complicated as well). Just wanted to give fair warning.**

Chapter Seven

They never met outside their sessions with the clientele – Helena discovered that Monika lived with another group of Mrs. Sloan's girls in another house – but their encounters became more numerous and more frequent as it wasn't just Mr. Hankins and others like him who requested them. Men whom Helena had never known to show an interest in watching women together asked for them. Soon she learned that there was even a special name for them, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, a marginal improvement, she supposed, over being designated by a pointing finger and "The dark one," which was what she more commonly experienced.

Monika enjoyed the comparison, though she recognized the inherent absurdity of likening any aspect of what they did to a fairy tale, at least the sunnier parts of one. As she and Helena lay next to each other in various beds in various houses, sometimes before their client arrived but more typically after he had left, she would lift strands of Helena's hair, letting them fall back onto the pillow, and wonder which of them was Snow White. One day she would argue that Helena was Snow White because of her dark hair, and the next Monika would claim that she was Snow White because she was more 'snow white' than Helena. At other times she would say teasingly that Helena must be Sleeping Beauty because she snored when she slept. Helena didn't care, not even about the snoring, entranced by Monika's lightly accented alto, the way it seemed to skim over certain consonants and cling to others, the remnant of her early years in Germany, or so Monika said.

Had she been pressed to describe her relationship with Monika, Helena would have described it as an amusement. Although the pleasure they took in one another was unfeigned and independent of whether they were alone or sharing the bed with a client, Helena didn't think about Monika when they weren't together, didn't yearn for her, didn't try to put a name to her feelings, whatever they were. She was aware that some of the girls developed attachments to each other, sharing a room when they weren't being called to work in separate ones. As she would pass through the corridors during the day, she could hear them, their moans, the dull thumping of their beds, but she would have scoffed at the idea that she and Monika shared anything with them. Yet Helena recognized, despite the fact that she had confided nothing about herself to Monika and didn't know what Monika's last name was or what her life had been before she came to work for Mrs. Sloan, that she hadn't felt as close to someone since her grandfather died.

During one long, lovely afternoon when snow was falling outside the windows and they had the room to themselves, their client never having shown up and neither Helena nor Monika inclined to send for Kincaid and the carriage, they lolled in bed, idly drawing traceries on each other's skin. Monika's fingertip slowly followed a line, not long or large but with the tight, shiny look of a scar, that was low on Helena's stomach. "What happened to your child?" She asked softly.

Helena considered not answering but said with a clipped finality to discourage further questions, "I don't have her anymore."

"Did she die?" Monika persisted.

"No." Said even more grimly.

"And yet you grieve." Helena felt the mattress shift, and Monika leaned over to nuzzle her face into Helena's neck, leaving a string of kisses. "You've come from a good family, you've had advantages, but here you are with the rest of us working for Mrs. Sloan. I think I understand now, yours is the slow suicide."

Helena lifted her head, reluctantly meeting the blue eyes that were regarding her curiously but not unkindly. "Most of us are here because we know nothing else or were driven to it out of desperation. But a very few are here because they chose to be here. Instead of putting a gun to their heads or taking poison, they wait for disease to eat them up or for Mrs. Sloan to decide they're too ugly or worn out to keep around. They drift. They don't want to live anymore but they can't bring themselves to die."

"And that's what you think I'm doing?" Helena demanded hoarsely, sliding away from her toward the other side of the bed.

Monika shrugged. "You shouldn't be here. Why else would you stay?"

"What about you?"

Another shrug. "Another story for another day." She burrowed deeper into the bed, and they were quiet for awhile. Helena's eyelids fluttered shut; the room was too warm and sleep was an escape from talking. Suddenly a hand grabbed her calf and pulled her toward the center of the bed. Monika launched herself over her, arms planted on either side of Helena's head. Need and something else as fierce, the compulsion to flee her own demons, had burned away the sorrow clouding Monika's eyes. "If we can't save ourselves," she whispered, "we should enjoy each other before we drown."

Then one day she was gone. It was another blonde waiting for Helena in the bed, not nearly as lovely, her lips remaining stubbornly downturned when Helena sat beside her, signaling that Helena was as much to be suffered as Mr. Hankins. But Mr. Hankins seemed oblivious to the fact that Snow White or Sleeping Beauty (did it matter now which Monika had been?) had been replaced by one of Cinderella's stepsisters, fussing with the belt of his robe as the other woman listlessly fondled Helena's breast. After several weeks and long after her fears had undermined her belief that Monika had been assigned to other clients, Helena reluctantly asked Kincaid what had happened as he helped her into the carriage. At first he ignored her, then as her questions became more plaintive, he smiled smugly at her. Helena wondered if he was going to require her to pleasure him in exchange for information. It wouldn't be the first time that he had extorted the touch of her hand or mouth on him for something that cost him nothing to provide or which he was already being paid by Mrs. Sloan to do, such as taking her to the latest brownstone that was "home." Helena was preparing to invite him into the carriage with her when he said cryptically, "She took something that wasn't hers." He shut the door behind her and climbed to his seat, refusing to say anything more.

Her worries intensifying, Helena swallowed her pride and approached one of the girls in the house who had been with Mrs. Sloan the longest. But the woman shook her head at Monika's name and when Helena asked what Kincaid meant when he said Monika had taken something that wasn't hers, the woman's face closed in on itself with fear and she said harshly, "Asking questions like that causes trouble. That girl is gone. Safest thing to do is to forget about her."

Helena didn't forget about her, couldn't help but hope every time she saw a blond head in a room that the rest of her would belong to Monika, but when the woman turn toward her, the eyes would be brown or green or she would speak and the voice would be too high-pitched, too girlish, the accent Irish or Scottish or native New York, not German. It seemed to her now that every woman had a lover in the house and the off-hours of their days were filled with the sounds of their lovemaking. Helena would take refuge under the covers of her bed and crush a pillow over her ears. It wasn't so much time but the unending flow of bodies and their inescapable sameness, no matter how thin or fat or hairy each in its specificity might be, that succeeded in blurring the distinctiveness of Monika's features in Helena's mind and transforming the complexion Monika once proudly compared to a pearl to the undifferentiated grays in which Helena visually clothed all her clients. In the end, Monika became just another shadowy figure in another room and their moments together nothing more than flesh and noise.

When she thought she couldn't be surprised anymore, not by the tricks she performed or favors she was asked to grant, or the casual indignities that were a part of being bought and sold, she was surprised. She discovered she was pregnant. Although the symptoms were familiar, she had been slow to recognize what they meant. And once she did, she wrapped her arms around her stomach and rocked back and forth on the bed. She couldn't carry a child and remain in Mrs. Sloan's employ. If she wanted to carry the child. Once upon a time, she hadn't wanted to carry Christina either, but that had changed. She stopped rocking and pulled up the shift she was wearing and glanced down at her belly, just beginning to swell. She would never know who its father was, and there were any number of men she had been with whom she would shudder to think had fathered her child. Mr. Akins, who would offhandedly comment that he had "broken in" a new housemaid, or Mr. Bascomb, who never called her Emily or any name because, as he said, "Whores should have numbers, not names." Or Kincaid. On the other hand, the contempt she had grown to feel for Christina's father hadn't diminished her love for her daughter. She could love this child, too. If she wanted to.

She had been so used to not feeling – it was too much to take in all at once, and she didn't have the luxury of time. Surely there was no girl in the house who hadn't heard her retching of a morning into a basin. She needed to get to Mrs. Sloan before one of them did. This wasn't a day that Mrs. Sloan was normally in the house, but she did set aside a few mornings or afternoons a week to go over the house's business affairs and to mete out disciplinary actions to girls who were proving troublesome. Helena wasn't one of the "difficult" girls, which, she reflected wryly, would amaze her family were they to know of it, but she didn't entertain the belief that anything positive would come of the meeting. She lay on her side, her hand automatically stroking her abdomen. She had found the motion soothing when she was carrying Christina, and she began to relax, the even, repetitive rhythm of the stroking lulling her to sleep. She had saved enough money that she could leave Mrs. Sloan and care for the baby, for awhile, at any rate. It wouldn't have to turn out like before. She was both wiser and harder now. If she wanted to.

Mrs. Sloan held her office in, rather held court in, a cramped room off what had once been the morning room of the house, but which had become another parlor or drawing room for the men when they were ready to select their girls for the evening, less by conversation than by pinching or tweaking or groping the girls, as if they were fruit whose ripeness had to be tested before they were chosen. The furniture in her office, compared to that in the main rooms, was utilitarian, acquired at second- or third-hand, and consisting of little more than a desk and a few straight-backed chairs.

There was no catching Mrs. Sloan in a good mood. She had no moods. The dry, remote voice that Helena had first heard three years ago had never once changed in volume or expression. It, like her eyes, was as colorless as rain. "You'll have to see the doctor" was all Mrs. Sloan said when Helena told her that she was pregnant.

Moving uncomfortably on one of the chairs, the wood as unyielding as stone, Helena covered her unease with a practiced light laugh. Though jollying Mrs. Sloan was a Sisyphean task, she could try to leaven the situation a little, if only to find out how much allowance she would be granted. "I've had a few gentlemen make the observation that a woman with child can be quite. . . .enticing."

"Precious few," Mrs. Sloan grunted. She had been reviewing a list of names with check marks penciled next to some of them and appeared mildly surprised that Helena was still in the room, speaking. "Most men don't pay to bed a woman who reminds them of their wives. Whores exist so men can forget their wives." Mrs. Sloan seemed to be waiting for Helena to show some sign that she recognized the truth of her words. When Helena said nothing, continuing only to smile guilelessly, Mrs. Sloan said with careful emphasis but no trace of irritation. "Pregnant girls don't make money for me, Emily."

"So I couldn't arrange for a leave of absence?" Helena teased, looking up at Mrs. Sloan through her eyelashes and pushing out her lips in the tiniest pout. Perhaps a bit of mock flirtation might coax a chuckle out of the old girl, seeing the game run every night on their clients being run, if tongue-in-cheek, on her. Two veterans sharing a laugh at their profession, as it were.

Mrs. Sloan remained impassive, saying with an aridity that splintered the air in the room, "I've had girls come to me before wanting to keep their babies, and if it suited me, I let them go. It doesn't suit me to let you go. You're one of my best." She squinted at the list, and Helena received the impression that Mrs. Sloan was weighing her next words. The hesitancy, if that was what it was, rested oddly on her, making her appear, as she viewed her list, more like a pensive housewife trying to determine if she could stretch out her supply of flour than a successful madam. Helena felt a completely unfounded surge of hope, stronger than it should have been for the fate of a child she didn't even know she was carrying a few days ago.

But when Mrs. Sloan raised her eyes from the list, she smiled, and seeing the smile Helena would have taken more comfort in the woman's habitual expressionlessness. It was warmer by far. The smile was the rounded edge of a scimitar, and Helena felt it cleaving through her. "You don't know how many offers for you I've turned down. The moment you entered this house you were mine. That child of yours is mine, and I don't want it. I'll make an appointment for you with Dr. Barbour, and Kincaid will be right by your side." She took a ledger from one of the desk drawers and riffled through the pages until she came to the one she wanted. "You'll need a day or two to recover, so it'll have to wait until next week," she said matter of factly. The blade of her smile dropped but the colorless eyes took on the glare of ice. "I know you think you're clever. Don't be. I'll be watching you."

In her room, Helena crawled back under the covers of her bed. She needed to think, to plan, but the feeble stirrings for the child within her were just that, feeble, against Mrs. Sloan's relentless profit-seeking and her own apathy. Helena knew she could easily enough outwit Mrs. Sloan and Kincaid and whatever other henchmen might be lurking about. She could withdraw the money in her accounts and flee. Wasn't that why she had invested and reinvested what little she earned? She could save herself. If she wanted to.

Other than making her nightly appearances in the downstairs parlors Helena didn't leave her room. She had her meals brought up from the kitchen and when she wasn't servicing clients, she slept. It could have happened because there was something horribly wrong with the baby, an error so monstrous in its development that her body, in overcorrection, chose to expel it. The religious sort would claim that the fatal flaw had occurred at conception, but if that was so, how had Christina been such a beautiful child? But it could have just as easily been Mrs. Sloan ensuring that nothing was left to chance. There were chemicals that, if ingested, could cause miscarriages. Kincaid or any of the girls could have put drops in her tea or on her food.

All she knew for certain, however, was that she woke up in the middle of the night, days before her appointment with Dr. Barbour, in agony from the cramps razoring through her abdomen. She staggered out of bed, fumbling to light a lamp, and that was when she saw the blood, a pool of it soaking into the mattress, staining the bottom half of her nightgown. She made it to the door and lurched into the corridor, trying to cry out for help, although she had the helpless feeling that her mouth was opening and closing as soundlessly as a goldfish in a bowl. She heard voices raised in alarm, but they grew fainter, as if the girls were moving away from her and not toward her. Her last thought before she collapsed on the floor was that she should call them back. But only if she wanted to.

She didn't know where she was. Only that she hurt. There were voices near her this time and they weren't moving away. One, a woman's, was angry, the other, a man's, was apologetic. Sleepily, Helena thought the woman was angrier than the situation warranted, denouncing the man as a fool and claiming that she was going to lose a lot of money. His voice grew less apologetic and more defensive. He had done all he could, he was saying, but she had lost too much blood and infection was setting in. The woman had lost too much blood? Helena tried to puzzle out the inconsistency. A woman who had lost too much blood wouldn't be able to be so angry, wouldn't be able to slam a door with such vehemence. She would feel more like Helena was feeling now, weak and tired and muddle-headed. There, she almost had the answer, but she lost the thread of it in the descending darkness.

She woke again. She still hurt, but she felt hot. Cold too. Hot and cold at the same time, surely there was a logical explanation for that. The woman had returned. Helena could recognize her voice, and it didn't sound angry. It sounded resigned, the man's too, and Helena was glad because she didn't like fighting. Her parents had always told her that raising her voice in anger was unseemly.

"Get rid of her," the woman said.

"It won't be much longer," the man responded.

Helena didn't hear them after awhile, but she wasn't alone. Someone was bending over her, looking at her gently, lovingly, but she was shaking her beautiful head just a little, as if she was the tiniest bit disappointed. "You're a slow suicide," she said. Her hair was blond, like the sun, and tendrils of it caressed Helena's face, and Helena believed that if only she could get closer to it she might feel warm. She struggled to lift herself, but the woman was drawing away. Monika. "Not so slow anymore," Helena whispered. "I've hurried up the process." But Monika was beyond her outstretched fingers, and Helena would have wept had she the strength as Monika's form became smaller in the distance. She could follow her. If she wanted to. Oh, but she did, she did want to.

#

Death was scratchy, like wool blankets, and it smelled like hair that hadn't been washed in too long. It was also noisy, with shoes scuffling along the floor and hushed voices and the tink of glass against metal. Helena had expected nothingness, not something as banal as a sickroom. That was what death reminded her of, a sickroom, with its stuffiness and pervasive half-medicinal, half-sour smells. If she had to bear that for an eternity, she would prefer to bear it alone. But the others weren't leaving. In fact, she felt a hand rest briefly on her forehead.

"Her fever's broken," the voice said calmly but with a note of relief. The hand lifted, only to return a moment later with a spoon pushing at Helena's lips. "Open up," the voice commanded but gently, and Helena, like a baby bird, opened her mouth, her eyes closed. She coughed on the medicine, and an arm wrapped around her back holding her up more firmly. Instinctively Helena curled into it, and the gentle voice said, "There, you'll be all right."

A voice from across the room, another woman, said, "I'll leave her in your capable hands, but I'll be back later to see how she's doing.

The nearer voice said, "She's going to be fine, Irene. We got to her in time."

"Barely," the other woman huffed. Heels sharply clacking the length of the floor, the sound of a door closing.

Helena struggled to open her eyes. In her wavering vision, she saw that the face close to hers was a warm brown with even softer brown eyes. "You saved me," she said, her voice cracked with disuse.

"Yes," the woman said simply.

"What's your name?" Helena licked her lips. They were dry and split. She could taste the dried blood on them.

"Leena."

"Well, Leena, don't expect me to thank you for it." At that, Leena smiled broadly, and as Helena drifted back to sleep, she wondered what the other woman found so funny.

As the days and weeks wore on, Helena grew frustrated with her own weakness. It took several days before she was able to sit up in bed unaided and to move from it to a cushioned chair positioned just a few steps away. She became exhausted brushing her own hair, and the first time she wobbled to the mirror over the bureau, she was shocked by how almost translucent she looked. Leena stayed with her throughout the day and well into the evening as she healed, and though Leena kept her well supplied with reading materials, Helena spent a good amount of their time talking. Leena never pried, never probed, and seemed perfectly content with the silence that would settle between them when Helena ran out of things to say, but Helena started to twitch when the room got quiet, and she would start a new story about. . . something. When the room was silent, time not only hung heavy it seemed to swing backward as well, taking Helena to that other room where the woman, Mrs. Sloan, it had to have been, said "Get rid of her" and where she had lost Monika again before she had even been able to touch her. Words, a frail defense, were all she had to keep herself from being swept into that horrid, dark room and left there.

Occasionally it was the other woman, Mrs. Frederic, who stayed with her. Though Leena's was the more restful personality, Helena felt more comfortable, in some respects, with the older woman. Her eyes were more watchful, measuring, and while she had yet to ask Helena anything other than how she was feeling and if there was some item or necessary she was in need of, Helena knew the woman wanted something from her. She was expert in recognizing and responding to others' wants, and she was content to wait until Mrs. Frederic was ready to divulge hers. One afternoon she slowly made her way to a window and looked down at the traffic in the street and the passersby on the sidewalks. Helena wasn't sure what day it was but thought it must not be Sunday; horses were drawing wagons stacked with barrels and crates, and the men were wearing work clothes, not leisure clothing or the suits they would wear to church. Helena had tried to ask Leena about where they had found her and, more importantly, how they had known about her, but Leena had responded only evasively, telling Helena that she should concentrate, instead, on getting better. She didn't like the fact that she had to creep across the floor or that she was grateful for the chair she could sink into next to the window, but she was feeling better, and that's why she wanted answers to her questions.

She would start out with an easy one first. "Where are we?"

In her chair by the bed, Mrs. Frederic hadn't stopped reading her book as Helena crossed to the window, a lifted eyebrow the only sign that she was watching Helena's progress. She put her book down in her lap, ready for an extended conversation. "We're in Harlem."

In her four years in New York, Helena still had only the haziest idea of the layout of the city, but she knew Harlem was home to some of its newest and poorest immigrants, and she looked at Mrs. Frederic curiously. "They ask fewer questions here," Mrs. Frederic said.

"Why would it matter? Are you hiding me?"

Mrs. Frederic cocked her head, regarding Helena intently. "No, but you must admit that two black women traveling with a very ill white woman might raise some unpleasant questions."

"Which doesn't tell me why you brought me here," Helena said.

"When I heard that the famous 'Snow White' lay near death in a charity ward of a hospital, I decided I had to see for myself." Mrs. Frederic's gaze had become enigmatic.

Helena turned her head away from Mrs. Frederic to look out the window again. She wasn't all the way better; it was taking her too long to think through this, to understand why a middle-aged black woman would know about the nickname applied to a prostitute who serviced wealthy white men. She also couldn't understand why Mrs. Frederic would have been interested in trying to save her. Certainly there were patients in the charity wards more deserving of the act of a Good Samaritan than Helena. Rubbing her forehead, Helena said, "I'm amazed that a respectable-appearing woman such as yourself would have any idea who Snow White was, let alone want to help her."

"Respectability has its limitations, and when it gets in the way of what I need to do, I don't worry about being respectable." Mrs. Frederic folded her hands on top of her book. "I know that you were one of Elizabeth Sloan's girls and that you went by the name of Emily Lake. I also know that you were much sought after. Our rescuing you from the charity ward, where, Miss Wells, you would have died, was not disinterested."

"I didn't think it was," Helena murmured, feeling a stab of disappointment at the admission. She slumped in the chair, suddenly tired, and uncertain that she could make it back to her bed without assistance.

As if divining how she was feeling, Mrs. Frederic added softly, "Yes, when I heard that you had been left for dead at the hospital's doors, I began to think how you might be able to help us if we were able to save you. But that said, Miss Wells, you are free to walk away from this place anytime you're able, and no one will try to stop you."

"I can't imagine how I would be of any use to you," Helena said with not a little bitterness.

Mrs. Frederic rose and walked over to where Helena remained slumped, like a chastised child, in her chair. Swiftly and with seemingly little effort, she lifted Helena from the chair and guided her back toward her bed, bearing most of Helena's weight as Helena slowly placed one trembling foot in front of another. "That can wait until you're well." She settled Helena against her pillows and drew the covers, almost maternally, over her legs.

"Can you at least tell me how you knew who I was?" Mrs. Frederic's face was beginning to blur and subdivide as Helena fought the sleep that was stealing over her.

"I'm afraid that will also have to wait."

In her interactions with others, Helena preferred to be the one providing the answers, not asking the questions. She was going to have address the balance of power in her relationship with Mrs. Frederic. But, as Mrs. Frederic would say, that would have to wait. In the meantime, there was one more question Helena needed to ask. "You knew about Snow White, do you know what happened to Sleeping Beauty?"

For a moment, there was something akin to pity in Mrs. Frederic's eyes, but then it was gone, and she was saying, "I'm sorry, but I don't recognize the name."

More weeks passed, and Helena could not only walk around her sickroom unaided, but she could also take short walks around the neighborhood if she had Leena at her side ready to offer an arm or suggest they take a rest. Spring was making an earnest effort, trees were tentatively putting forth buds and tulips in pots had raised their heads above the soil and were arching toward the sun. Like them, Helena turned her face up toward the sunlight, allowing herself to enjoy for a passing second or two the warmth beating down on her skin. But only for a second or two, she didn't know but when she would have to trade on that famed complexion of hers again. Leena was taking them toward a small, very small greenspace, not big enough to be called a park but big enough for a few benches closely set together, on which they would sit and watch the people strolling by.

Looking down at her figure, which, though still too thin, was beginning to regain some of its shapeliness, Helena said, "Almost as good as new."

"Almost," Leena agreed too cheerily.

"There's been something you've not wanted to tell me for days." Helena wrapped the shawl around her shoulders more tightly. While the sun was warm, the breeze still carried a tinge of winter. "I'm not dying after all, am I?" She cast a sideways glance at Leena, but Leena wasn't smiling. Helena knew what Leena didn't want to tell her, had somehow known even when she was half-out of her mind with fever under the dubious ministrations of Dr. Barbour. He had practically gutted her; she felt as if he had scraped her clean. "I won't be able to have any more children."

Leena stopped her head mid-shake and pulled Helena's hand through the crook of her arm. "No. . . I don't know." She drew Helena closer to her. "He was clumsy. He was trying to stop the bleeding, I think, but he wasn't careful, and it was the instruments he used that caused the infection, most likely. Maybe, in time. . . . "

Helena patted Leena's arm, as if she were the one in need of comfort. "He was a butcher, and I know the only reason I survived at all was because of you." She hesitated. "I wasn't a very good mother the first time around." She laughed dismissively, although even she heard the hollowness in it. "My forever-to-be-unborn children thank you."

"Helena," Leena said pleadingly.

They were entering the tiny park now, and Helena pointed to the bench where they usually sat. It was set under the branches of an oak tree and next to a winding gravel path that paralleled the boundaries of the park. "I'm ready to rest for a bit, aren't you?"

They sat on the bench, not speaking, watching children playing hooky from school chase each other in the grass, still dormant brown, and men, in worn and patched trousers and shirts, sharing cigarettes with one another as they surveyed the street, thick with drays and wagons, looking to earn some money by helping a driver to unload his goods or, if the opportunity presented itself, to take a box or crate when he wasn't looking. Leena was peeling an orange she had removed from a pocket of her skirt, and she handed Helena a section. As Helena chewed her orange, which was dry and fibrous, she absently swept her skirts aside, making room for the woman who had joined them.

"Are you enjoying your outing, Miss Wells?" Mrs. Frederic asked, settling against the back of the bench with a sigh.

"I'm alive, and I'm warm, and, for right now, I'm not concerned with how I'm going to support myself. The only blot," she paused, regarding Mrs. Frederic with a hauteur so regal that the other woman couldn't repress a smile. "The only blot," she repeated, turning to Leena, "is that rather unsatisfactory orange." Leena ignored the withering glare and tilted her head in the direction of the sun.

"I'm pleased to see that you're in good spirits," Mrs. Frederic said. Again there was silence, and Helena watched one of the men smoking cigarettes, the one wearing the shabbiest clothes among his companions, dart into the street and attempt to take a box from the back of an unattended wagon. He had no sooner lifted it than the driver, breaking off a conversation with a woman on the sidewalk, lashed out at the man's arm with a stout stick. Howling in pain, the man dropped the box and, holding his arm against his chest, began to run down the street, the driver in pursuit. The man's companions suddenly stirred and, pinching out their cigarettes, hurried to the back of the wagon and started passing boxes to one another. Too late, the driver spun around, yelling to bystanders to stop the thieves. A few people turned their heads but made no attempt to stop the men rushing away from the wagon. Even the policeman on patrol only gave the driver a casually apologetic roll of his shoulder.

As the commotion subsided, Mrs. Frederic remarked, "A clever plan."

"Only if one of your compatriots is willing to sacrifice himself," Helena responded. "The first fellow will be lucky if that blow didn't break his arm."

"Sometimes sacrifice is necessary for the greater good."

Helena looked steadily at Mrs. Frederic. "Should I be finding an object lesson in all this? I would be most impressed if that was a bit of street theater you orchestrated just for me."

"Unfortunately I can't take credit, but it was opportune." Mrs. Frederic appraised Helena. Her skin now had a pink undertone, a welcome change from the grayish pallor it had carried for months. Her black hair shone glossily in the sunlight, the color so rich and deep its sheen was almost blue. Her dress hung on her, but the dress that Mrs. Frederic had in mind would be artfully tailored to disguise how thin Helena still was. "I assume you've heard of Henry Tremaine."

Helena narrowed her eyes in surprise at the non sequitur but said only, "Who hasn't?"

"He's not only extremely rich," Mrs. Frederic said, "but he's also very, very powerful. It's said of him that he could have had a cabinet post in the current administration. But he prefers to exert his influence behind the scenes." As Helena continued to look at her, the narrowed eyes the only sign that she was listening with any interest, Mrs. Frederic added, "And he just happens to be in need of a new mistress."

"Did he tire of his old one?" Helena asked idly.

Mrs. Frederic's expression might have been best described as smug. "She was made an offer that she couldn't refuse. From chorus girl to lead actress in a traveling show that will be touring the West for the next several months, or so I hear." She looked meaningfully at Helena.

"If you're suggesting that I work my wiles on Mr. Tremaine, I believe he prefers the companionship of the, theoretically at least, unpaid variety, actresses in particular. The last time I was on stage was when I was nine, playing the heroine in one of my brother's original productions. I was kidnapped by pirates, married to the lord of a castle, and beheaded as Mary Queen of Scots, though not necessarily in that order."

"I think you underestimate yourself."

"Rarely," Helena said dryly. Her face grew serious. "I know, Mrs. Frederic, how much I'm in your debt, and I will do what I can to repay you. But Mr. Tremaine will not be looking for his next mistress among the cast-offs of Elizabeth Sloan. For the sake of argument, even were I to try to capture his interest, there would be too many of his associates who would recognize me. I have money. I can recompense you and Leena for a small portion of the care you've given me." Helena noticed that Leena's frown, which had first appeared at the mention of Henry Tremaine had deepened, but she looked past Helena's gently inquiring expression, sending a troubled glance in Mrs. Frederic's direction.

"You asked me once how I knew you were called Snow White and that you were dying in a hospital charity ward." Mrs. Frederic watched two children rolling a hoop run by them, their cries bright and sharp-edged like newly minted coins. "Have you noticed what the powerful and wealthy in this country have in common? They tend to share the same skin color, the same sex, the same origins. For those of us who are different, it's far more difficult to achieve they have achieved. If we arrive at the same place at all, we have to arrive there indirectly." She peered over the top of her spectacles at Helena. "Information is simply another form of currency and far easier for people like us to obtain. That is what I trade in, Miss Wells. A man like Henry Tremaine is an invaluable source of information, financial and political. If we were to have a friend who was also a. . . friend . . . of Mr. Tremaine, we could be positioned to do very well for ourselves and for others as well."

"And who are these others?"

"People who seek to improve their lot in life. We help each other when we can." Seeing the skepticism in Helena's eyes, Mrs. Frederic said, "Really, there's nothing sinister about this. We just want for those who don't have what the Henry Tremaines of the world have to have a chance, an opportunity to better their lives. As I said before, you can walk away at any time. You owe us nothing."

Helena could pack her few belongings, not that any of them truly belonged to her as they had all been provided by Mrs. Frederic or Leena, and book passage on the next train out of New York or ship leaving the harbor. She could return to her father's house, where they might take her in – the separation had been so profoundly bitter that she hadn't spoken with either her mother or father since Christina was an infant – as though she were some poor relation, a second cousin once removed, whose welfare it was their Christian duty to shoulder. She could sit silently through meals and assist at her mother's teas and watch Christina become a young lady from afar, nothing more to her than Aunt Helena, an eccentric old maid who had returned to the family fold as unexpectedly as she had left it, with nothing to show for her long absence but a cobbled-together package of evasions and half-truths. Or she could continue to drift, moving west to Chicago and the Pacific Coast or south to New Orleans, perhaps, or Mexico. Monika had once described the two of them as drowning, albeit, Helena reflected, in their own separate seas, and it was a preciously small buoy to cling to, the plan of this imperturbable middle-aged black woman to collect for the dispossessed the crumbs of the well-off, to sort through the detritus of their lives, their carelessly disclosed secrets and overheard conversations, in the hopes of gleaning something useful, something that some enterprising immigrant from a shtetl in Poland or a village in Sicily could transform into a stroke of good fortune or prosperity. And who was she to call it absurd? Was it any more ludicrous than the unquestioned belief of an 18-year-old girl that she could raise a child on her own, completely independent of any assistance? What was one more aging titan of industry laboring between her legs?

"Tell me," Helena said, her eyes, as they locked on Mrs. Frederic, cool and remote, "what do you know of Henry Tremaine's passions?"

After the visit to the park that day she became Charlotte Ramsey. It wouldn't be enough to prevent anyone who recognized her as Emily (or Snow White) from realizing that Emily and Charlotte were the same person, but even though it was a flimsily erected barrier against her former association with Mrs. Sloan, it left her a footing, although a precarious one, from which to leap into Henry Tremaine's life. Whether she could keep herself there once she landed rested entirely on her ability to charm him.

Fascinate him, Helena amended, as she wandered through the rented rooms that were home, only temporarily it was hoped, to Miss Ramsey, an Englishwoman of uncertain background and means but with aspirations for a much more secure future. The rooms were tasteful but suitably modest and the wardrobe provided for her was the same, with, perhaps, the exception of the dress Mrs. Frederic was insisting Helena wear when she met Mr. Tremaine. Other than its color, a deep blue that would emphasize the darkness of her hair and the porcelain whiteness of her skin, the dress had nothing to recommend it. The bustle was too. . . bustling, and the dress sported so many ribbons and furbelows that Helena feared she would look like a Christmas present once she put it on.

Leena followed her into the tiny sitting room. She nodded approvingly at the furniture and wallpaper but her eyes were anxious. Henry Tremaine had been the subject of several conversations between Helena and Mrs. Frederic since the park, and Leena had never completely lost her troubled expression. Running her fingers along the edge of the spindly writing desk, she said, looking away from Helena, "You don't have to do this, you know. You're not healed."

"Of course I am," Helena objected.

Leena approached her and poked her in the chest just below her collarbone. "Not in here."

"My lungs are in fine working order," Helena joked.

Leena closed her eyes in irritation. "Don't make light of this, Helena. Sometimes I think Irene and I are being no different than –"

"Elizabeth Sloan?" Helena supplied. At Leena's reluctant nod, Helena said, "You're nothing like her. I'm doing this because I want to, not because I have to." It wasn't an entirely true statement, Helena acknowledged, because she felt an obligation to the two of them that she didn't know how to repay otherwise, but it wasn't a lie either.

"I share Irene's goals," Leena said quietly, "but I don't always share her methods. If you don't like him, if he doesn't treat you well. . . ."

Helena cupped Leena's face, looking intently into the worried brown eyes. "It's not a fait accompli, darling. I may not be to his liking." Dropping her hand to Leena's, she pulled Leena with her onto the sofa. "But that would be only because I hadn't yet educated his tastes," she said with the mock boastfulness that never failed to elicit a wry smile from Leena. Seeing that the mouth remained solemnly compressed, Helena tried again. "Don't worry about the state of my soul, I bartered it away a long time ago." But Leena heard the caustic note Helena hadn't been quite able to soften, and the line of her mouth grew even thinner, her expression more pained. Unable to bear Leena's pity or sympathy, she was too afraid to find out which, Helena jumped up from the sofa and flung open the doors to her wardrobe. "Make sure that Mr. Waring arrives 15 minutes late," she said curtly.

Undoubtedly through a byzantine series of connections that Helena knew she wouldn't have the patience to follow, Mrs. Frederic knew of a casual business acquaintance of Henry Tremaine, who was more than happy, she averred, to have Helena accompany him as his guest to the theater and to an intimate supper afterward hosted by Mr. Tremaine. Theodore Waring was a plump man in his fifties with a white fringe of hair around his head that was matched by the white fringe of hair curving around his jaw like a handle. Although he bestowed several appreciative glances upon Helena, he was more concerned with the time ticking away on his pocket watch, removing it from the pocket of his vest repeatedly and bemoaning how late they were. Helena ignored his complaints just as she had ignored his glances, spending her time during their carriage ride to the theater asking him about the others who would be attending the play with Mr. Tremaine. Mr. Waring, halted mid-complaint, scratched his head and admitted that he didn't know, except that there would be, he said, "a number of young ladies like yourself."

Of course there would be, Helena grimly smiled to herself. Tonight Mr. Tremaine was going to be surrounded by butterflies, and all he had to do was swing his net to capture one. As they entered his private box, the play already having begun, heads swiveled toward them, and one in particular was held at an imperious angle, Henry Tremaine's. As Mr. Waring apologized for how late they were, his hushed tone making his apologies all the more abject, that imperious head raked Helena with a cold, searching gaze to which she offered only a slight, equally cold smile. She smiled at the other women as well, but all she heard was a dry warning rattle as they straightened in their chairs, their eyes a flat black, alert and venomous in their appraisal of her. No defenseless butterflies here. One woman scooted her chair away from that of her escort and possessively caressed Mr. Tremaine's shoulder, head nearly resting against his neck as she initiated a private conversation with him. Helena endured the crawl of the play toward intermission, Mr. Waring sitting so closely behind her that she could smell his breath, which had her wishing violently that he had eaten a few peppermints before the show.

At intermission, Mr. Waring led her to a balcony overlooking the theater's main floor and hovered next to her until Helena shooed him away in pursuit of refreshments. She didn't observe the other theater-goers in solitude; Mr. Tremaine joined her at the balcony's railing. He was both handsomer and younger than he looked in the occasional newspaper photograph. While only an inch or two taller than Helena, he was broadly and powerfully built, with wiry russet hair just beginning to gray and heavy-lidded hazel eyes. Competitors and political opponents had mistaken the sleepy look his face could often assume for inattentiveness – until he bought their companies for far less than their asking prices and, in the case of those who defied his control of party politics, turned their adherents against them. He wasn't looking sleepy now, Helena noted. In fact, he was very awake and looking at her closely

"Are you enjoying the play? It seemed to me that you were watching the audience with greater interest."

"Then it must not have been holding your attention either," Helena rejoined. "I was counting the empty seats. For a Joseph Reinecke comedy, it doesn't appear to be very well attended." One of Henry Tremaine's passions, Mrs. Frederic had informed her, was the theater. He fancied himself a producer, and Helena had spent more time than she would care to admit studying the current run of plays and identifying their backers. Mr. Tremaine had invested heavily in the current play, and if tonight's attendance was any indication, he wasn't receiving a large return.

His eyelids minutely lifted in what might have been surprise, but he said confidently, "It's just opened. Word of mouth will spread."

Helena knew that other women would make the choice to agree with him and then turn the topic to something about which they knew nothing and beg him to educate them. But Helena was not that kind of woman, not anymore, not even for Mrs. Frederic. "I can't imagine that it would be positive. For a comedy, it has no pacing, no snap, and the audience isn't laughing."

The eyelids flickered and drooped, this time in evident irritation. "And you're a theater critic?"

"No, but neither are all the people who didn't attend the play this evening," Helena said, holding her ground.

"Joseph Reinecke has a golden pen. You'll excuse me if I trust that over the opinions of a few carpers," Mr. Tremaine said, leaving Helena no doubt as to which camp he placed her in.

"Had a golden pen," Helena said blandly. "I've been told that Mr. Reinecke farms out much of the writing of his plays to younger, less well known playwrights. The only bits that the people laughed at are the ones that Mr. Brownlee wrote." She smiled, moving away to join a huffing and puffing Mr. Waring. "I hear that Mr. Brownlee has been struggling to catch the interest of backers. If his contributions to this play are as promising as they seem to be, he might be a worthy investment."

She could feel the hazel eyes burning into her back, but she didn't falter, slipping her arm around Mr. Waring's cautiously extended elbow (he was trying to hold two beverages) and guiding him to a quiet corner. As she sipped her drink, Mr. Waring thrust two bushy, alarmed eyebrows at her. "My dear Miss Ramsey, I think you should try to be more accommodating toward him. The goal is to please him."

"Wives are accommodating, Mr. Waring. And accommodation pleases a man for only a time, then it bores him. I don't bore men, and I certainly don't intend to leave Mr. Tremaine with the impression that I would bore him."

"You shouldn't have to worry about that," Mr. Waring muttered.

At intermission's end, as they returned to the box, Mr. Tremaine disengaged himself from the woman who was clinging upon his arm and slowed to walk in stride with Helena. "Now I fear that the supper I've arranged won't meet your exacting standards," he said with a sardonic gravity.

"There's no need to fear, Mr. Tremaine. If the meal is equal to Mr. Reinecke's latest effort, I won't hesitate to tell you," Helena said archly, with a teasing smile. His expression torn between amusement and annoyance, he sighed, waiting for her to enter the box ahead of him.

The supper was held in the dining room of a private club. The small party from the theater had expanded to a sizeable gathering, women eagerly leaving the company of their escorts to circle ever closer to Mr. Tremaine. Helena imagined that there wasn't an actress or dancing girl from the theater district with a night off who wasn't in attendance. Their dresses were loud, their voices louder, and while they petted him and swooned admiringly whenever he tossed a word in their direction, the women showed no mercy toward each other, not hesitating to step in front of one another and, in one case, sharply elbowing a competitor out of the way. Helena maintained a position on the perimeter, conversing with the many men who were jockeying for her attention, acting as though she no longer knew whether Mr. Tremaine was still present. Yet she was aware of how frequently his eyes fell on her, and she noted with some disquiet that a few of the men jostling to draw nearer to her were clients of Mrs. Sloan.

During the meal, which was excellent Helena had to admit, she sat at a table some distance from Mr. Tremaine's but she never once tried to catch his eye; she made sure her face was always courteously turned toward whichever man was speaking to her. Mr. Waring had long since abandoned her for the blandishments of two actresses young enough to be his daughters, and when the man on her left suggested they take in the air on the terrace, she took his arm without a backward look toward Mr. Tremaine's table. Her companion was earnest in his compliments, but Helena felt her eyes glazing over until she sensed that Mr. Tremaine had stepped onto the terrace. She leaned in closer to the man, at which he smiled with smug pleasure, and then dashed his hopes by saying in a whisper, "Hold still. I'm going to pretend that, for the first time this evening, you've just said something interesting to me."

A clearing of the throat and then Henry Tremaine said from very close by, "Reagan, would you give me a few minutes with Miss Ramsey."

Mr. Reagan, after a dour look at Helena, took his leave, and Mr. Tremaine stood next to Helena, resting his arms on the terrace's balustrade. There was a small lawn beyond the terrace and, beyond that, a fence, and beyond that the crowded streets of New York. But the fence and the lawn provided the illusion that the club was far away from the busy center of the city, and Helena thought she could hear the evening songs of birds between the sounds of traffic and the boisterous laughter from the room behind her.

"I always give credit where credit is due, and the supper was delicious, Mr. Tremaine," she said.

Mr. Tremaine ignored her compliment. "Sutter told me you used to work for Elizabeth Sloan. Is that true?" He said abruptly.

Helena's heart lurched, but her voice remained steady. "Yes." He hadn't yet looked at her, his face angled away from hers. "Does that make my presence offensive? Should I leave?" She asked it lightly, but he kept his face turned away. Wondering how she was going to explain this failure to Mrs. Frederic, Helena drew in a breath to thank him, as sincerely as she could, for the evening.

His hands suddenly flailing in the air, he said, as if to himself, "You seem. . . You're not what I expected. . . I don't usually. . . ."

"Consort with whores?" Helena brutally finished for him.

"Come, that's awfully offensive language." He sputtered.

"It's the truth. It's what I was. Although I suppose you think I could hardly aspire to the virtue of the assembly of chorus girls you have here this evening," she said acidly. As she swept away from him, he put a hand on her arm to stop her. She stared at his hand, then into his eyes. "Please remove your hand. You haven't bought me for the evening."

He lifted his hand as though the touch had burned him, and she stalked into the dining room, a queenly nod signaling to Mr. Waring her readiness to leave. With flustered excuses to the two actresses still hanging upon him, he rose and followed her to the entrance of the club, where he asked the doorman to hail them a hansom cab. He wisely remained silent on their way back to her rooms, but when he accompanied her to the entrance of the building, he said sadly, "I believe a softer approach would have worked better."

"You are free to try it on him, Mr. Waring," Helena said tiredly. She closed the door behind her and dragged her feet up the stairs to the second floor. Once in her rooms, she nearly ripped the dress from her in her eagerness to take it off. Foolish, foolish, to have antagonized him from the start. She had thought that challenging him would set her apart from the other women, but it had only marked her as a woman whom he needed to put in her place. She washed her face, wrapped herself in a robe, and settled on the sofa with a novel. She would only toss and turn if she went to bed, berating herself for such a colossal misadventure.

Someone was pounding at her door. She jerked awake, the novel sliding to the floor. She squinted at a clock whose hands she could just make out in the dim light, the flame in the lamp on the side table perilously low. Four o'clock. She tentatively approached the door; surely if it was Mrs. Frederic or Leena she would have announced herself. Opening the door a crack, she saw a square, stocky body with a shock of russet hair mussed as if a hand had been restlessly run through it. Mr. Tremaine's shirt was partially unbuttoned, and his eyes were red-rimmed, what little she could see of them beneath their lids.

"I don't take clients at this hour of the night," Helena said wryly, but drew her robe closer around her. She wasn't confident that he wouldn't try to force himself into the room.

He swayed, then steadied himself by grabbing at the lintel. "I'm not sure I like you at all," he said. "But I can't get you out of my head."

"Try to get some sleep, that might help," she said, preparing to close the door. He stuck his boot between the door and the jamb. "I can't stop you if you want to force your way in, but it will deal a severe blow to our relationship," Helena said with mock severity, but she clenched her fingers into fists to stop them from trembling.

He removed his foot and looked at her so beseechingly that she had the sudden wild impulse to laugh. Instead she buttoned his shirt and straightened his suit coat. "If you still feel this way after you've sobered up, you may send me flowers and invite me to tea or a ride in the park. You can pretend that I'm a lady, while I can pretend that you're a gentleman. Otherwise our association ends here, and I thank you for a most interesting evening."

She closed the door in his face and stood with her knees locked to prevent them from buckling under her. After a few minutes, she heard the creak of the hallway's floorboards under heavy, uneven footsteps, and she sucked in a long breath. She left the lamp on and curled up in a corner of the sofa and waited for sleep, long in coming, to overtake her. Waking up the next morning to more pounding on the door, she waited until there was silence in the hallway before she opened it. Dozens of roses in vases lined the faded runner, and a card affixed to the first of the vases invited her to tea the following afternoon.


End file.
